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Inspired by true events and his own life, Luke Icarus Simon delivers a haunting and poetic story of survival, identity, and the transformative power of art.
As the 51st anniversary of Cyprus's forced partition is marked in 2025, this timely and evocative novel sheds light on a legacy of colonisation, war, and resilience. Set in the late 1960s and 1970s between Nicosia and Sydney, The Art In My Palm is a searing, contemporary Greek tragedy.
Demosthenes likes jumping from the rooftop stairs of his family's stately home in Old Nicosia believing he can fly across the sea to the Middle East to visit his father. Excelling at school, he's curious to find out why his island has been passed around by colonisers for 11,000 years.
In 1974, war and abuse shatter Demosthenes's childhood innocence and the family flees Cyprus for Australia. Within seven years, Cyprus becomes a distant memory for Demosthenes, one filled with the vivid recall of the intoxicating scent of Greek jasmine and wild freesias. He is powerless as he watches his family disintegrate and become collateral damage to the myth of the successful immigrant family. His once formidable mother, silenced by a language she cannot learn, evolves into an unrecognisable version of self-an abandoned wife fighting poverty and illness. To survive, Demosthenes is compelled to leave school and get a mind-numbing job, alongside other failed immigrants, fighting hard to hold onto his dream of becoming an artist and to overcome his trauma and shame of having been repeatedly sexually abused.
A powerful debut novel about exile, resilience, and the enduring hope of a boy determined to rise above devastation.
"All taken from me: the picturesque Troodos Mountain villages I never visited...the aquamarine crystal waters of Famagusta I shall never again swim in...the innocence of a childhood I never got to enjoy...all this and more, and worse, that was unceremoniously taken from me, denied me. I never gave my consent to any such transformative transgressions against my fundamental rights as a Cypriot citizen. Who will compensate me... what international court of justice can I appeal to...to help me ease the load of pain and grievance I carry around like a donkey overloaded with supplies for a long walking journey, always fretting I'm going to be hungry and petrified...that I'll be annihilated and nobody shall be able to save me."
