In Sea of Many Returns, master storyteller Arnold Zable delivers a cavalcade of stories, characters and places. He takes us to the island of Ithaca, the Ionian Sea, Kalgoorlie and Melbourne, as well as Port Said, the Black Sea and Danube River ports.
Mentor leaves Ithaca in 1916, a young man, and arrives in Kalgoorlie. But race riots soon see him on another journey, this time to Melbourne. Nearly ninety years later, Mentor's Melbourne-born granddaughter Xanthe is translating Mentor's manuscript, and making her own journey - back to Ithaca. Through Mentor's manuscript and Xanthe's memories, we meet many people and hear their stories, spanning more than a century. Like Homer's Odysseus, they left Ithaca to journey to distant places.
We follow the lives of two brothers, who, as teenagers in the 1930s, build a boat and ferry freight and passengers across the Ionian Sea until one brother leaves for Australia. We meet Antonios Lekatsas and learn of his partnership with architect Walter Burley Griffin to design some of Melbourne's most creative buildings. And we hear the stories of the women who waited on Ithaca while their men sought fortune in Australia.
Sea of Many Returns is a moving novel exploring the immigrant experience and our connections with place and those we love.
