Apartment in Athens

Like Wescott's extraordinary novellaThe Pilgrim Hawk(which Susan Sontag described inThe New Yorkeras belonging "among the treasures of 20th-century American literature"),Apartment in Athensconcerns an unusual triangular relationship. In this story about a Greek couple in Nazi-occupied Athens who must share their living quarters with a German officer, Wescott stages an intense and unsettling drama of accommodation and rejection, resistance and compulsionan account of political oppression and spiritual struggle that is also a parable about the costs of closeted identity.

Glenway Wescott (1901-1987) was the author of the novels The Grandmothers and Apartment in Athens, in addition to several collections of stories and essays. His life—as revealed in his published journals and a joint biography of him and his lover, Monroe Wheeler—has been the subject of increasing interest in recent years.

David Leavitt ’s books include The Man Who Knew Too Much: Alan Turing and the Invention of the Computer and the novel The Indian Clerk, a finalist for both the PEN/Faulkner Prize and the IMPAC /Dublin Literary Award. He co-directs the MFA program in Creative Writing at the University of Florida.