The unspeakable acts of Zina Pavlou (by Eleni Kyriacou)

(Amazon UK link)

I didn’t know anything about Eleni Kyriacou, except that she is a British Cypriot. And I definitely would not have picked up her book ‘The unspeakable acts of Zina Pavlou’ under normal circumstances. But it was allocated for the August novel in our local reading group, so I downloaded it for my Kindle a few months ago when it was on special offer. 

I knew that this novel was based on a true and rather horrific story. Apparently, back in the 1950s, a Cypriot grandmother visiting her family in the UK was accused of murdering her daughter-in-law. She was found guilty, and was one of the last people to be hanged in the UK. It didn’t sound to me like the basis for an enjoyable or relaxing novel. I wasn’t planning to read it, since I was out of the country for most of August, and was going to miss the relevant meeting. But I saw it on my Kindle a few days before the meeting was scheduled, so decided I would at least read the first few chapters…

The two main characters are Zina, whose story is based on that of the guilty grandmother, and Eve, who acts as her interpreter. Zena has just arrived in the UK as the story start; it iis mainly set in the 1950s. Her son Michaelis moved away from Cyprus many years earlier, and she has longed to join him. She wants to make a new life for herself in England, to find a job and become independent. He finally invites her to stay, and sends her a ticket. 

Zina is not happy that her son married a German woman, Heda, but she wants to like her for her son’s sake. She also wants to meet her grandchildren, eight-year-old Anna and baby Georgie. And while Anna develops an immediate rapport with her grandmother, Georgie is kept away from her, as if they don’t trust her. 

But the book actually opens with Eve meeting Zina in prison. Zina has been arrested for having committed a terrible crime, something which she denies. Zina speaks almost no English, and Eve, who already works at another job, has been asked to be the official translator. She’ll be paid well, and the money will come in useful. Eve is married to a very nice man called Jimmy, but they are going through a rough patch. This is mainly because she had a traumatic miscarriage, and they have not been able to talk about it.

So there are multiple threads to this very well-written novel. Eve, I understand, is entirely fictional, as is her story. The plot involving Zina and the accusations and crime are, as far as possible, based on what really happened. But names are changed, and her son and his family are invented characters, although some of the incidents and scenes with the son did happen in reality.

It’s written from the two points of view - Zina’s and Eve’s - and also from more than one time-line. There’s the main story moving forward as Eve gets to know Zina, and we see the court procedures and eventual sentencing. And there’s also the back story, as Zina arrives in the UK and settles in. There are also some longer flashbacks to Zina’s teenage and young adult years, as other traumatic events transpire.

I liked Eve very much, though she didn’t seem to appreciate her husband enough. But I wasn’t sure what to make of Zina. She’s an extremely complicated character. She has suffered a lot, as becomes clear: she was married at fourteen to an abusive, adulterous and controlling man, and forced to do some terrible things. She had five children, and worked extremely hard to bring them up. Like many Cypriot women of the era, she works continually, cooking and cleaning and dealing with household issues. 

However she does not seem to have any real social skills. She doesn’t like the way her grandchildren are being brought up, and tries to interfere. She criticises and  questions, and generally makes herself a nuisance to her daughter-in-law. She is shocked that her son has abandoned Greek Orthodoxy, and tries to introduce candles and ikons into the house, something which Hedy finds quite disturbing.

As the evidence against Zina piles up, I assumed she was going to be found guilty, since that was the original real-life story; but I had no idea whether it was going to transpire that she actually committed the terrible crime, or whether she had been framed. She continually insists that she is innocent, and that everyone else is lying. 

I wouldn’t say I ‘enjoyed’ the book, exactly. But once I had started it became almost impossible to put down. The pace is good, the characters believable (for the era), and the plot so well crafted that tension rises almost imperceptibly as the back story sections move towards the sentencing. There are one or two places where the story drags a little - mostly descriptions of Eve’s situation as she works, and the people she sees. But for most of the novel, I was gripped.

So I’m glad it was chosen for the book group, and that I did make the time to read it. It’s very unlikely that I will read it again, but I expect the story will remain in my mind for some time. If you want something a bit different from the norm, and don't find the subject matter too distressing, I would recommend this book highly.

Review copyright 2025 Sue's Book Reviews