This is the second novella by Georgios Viziinos that started my 2023 reading endeavors. It is titled, My Mother's Sin. Another great work by Viziinos. In this novella, a mother of two boys and one daughter is devoted fully to her daughter often at the expense of the needs of her sons, and in such a degree that when her daughter becomes dangerously ill, she offers to God to take her two sons if he would just let her daughter live. When her daughter dies, she adopts and devotes herself with the same obsession to raise another daughter and when that daughter grows up and gets married, she adopts to raise another... Is it love that drives her or is there something else?

Once again, like in his other novella, "Who is My Brother's Murderer?," Viziinos in this novella also uses one of the sons to narrate their family's story and particularly his mother's story as she confesses to him a big secret.

Viziinos masterfully handles the issues of conscience and guilt, and the meaning of forgiveness when a pain is so deep-trenched within that receiving forgiveness might not be enough, and even religion might lose its meaning at the face of the inconceivable.

What is the mother's sin, if any? Who has judged her and condemned her guilty? Where can this mother find peace when even the church's role to grant mercy is rendered useless by the mother herself?

From the two novellas I have read by Viziinos, I think that his art lies in his ability to not give us definite answers, but to leave the judgment and the answers to us. His endings are complete, but the final judgment is left on us and that is why his endings are so powerful!