Eleni put an arm around him and said: “Come, come, life is ahead of us. Raise your soul now. We have much to do.”

This is a book about how the great forces of history shape us – and how world-famous political activist Yanis Varoufakis was inspired by the resilience and the courage of his family, from his mother Eleni and grandmothers Anna and Trisevgeni, to his partner Danae. It is both an intimate portrait of a political awakening and a dramatic sweep through Greece's history of post-colonial independence, Nazi occupation, communist partisan resistance, Cold War fracture, civil war, fascist dictatorship, socialist revival and tumultuous present-day economic collapse.

Raise Your Soul is a powerful tale of resistance and endurance – a beacon of hope for dark times.