A captivating portrait of Yanis Varoufakis's political awakening told through the history of
his family from 1924 to the present. 'Beautiful and inspiring I couldn't put it down'
ROSIE HOLT When Yanis Varoufakis was eight years old his uncle made him a model airplane out
of matchsticks and cigarette papers all he could find in his cell. Yet to his dismay his
mother Eleni broke open the fragile gift revealing a hidden message: instructions for fellow
dissidents ahead of their forthcoming court martial. It was 1969 and Uncle Panayis was a
political prisoner captured and tortured for resisting the military dictatorship. Dramatic in
scope and deep in feeling Raise Your Soul is an intimate portrait of three generations caught
up in the whirlwind of history. It is also a remarkable narrative spanning one hundred years
beginning in post-colonial Egypt in the 1920s and then tracing Greece's tumultuous century
through Nazi occupation communist resistance civil war Cold War fracture fascist
dictatorship socialist revival and present-day economic crisis. At its heart are the women
whose resilience defiance and courage inspired the visionary economist most: Eleni Anna
Trisevgeni Georgia and Danaë. Through their lives Varoufakis not only lays bare his own
political soul but confronts the dark forces of authoritarianism that still haunt Europe and
beyond reigniting hope in all of us that we can rise once more. 'A new book by Yanis
Varoufakis one of the most important political figures of our times is always momentous' KEN
LOACH
