Costantino: A True Story (Hardcover) by Constantin Coralis

9781418435547. New condition. Hard cover. Language: English. Pages: 548. Sewn binding. Cloth over boards. 548 p. The book recounts Costantino early years in the orphanages, the beatings by the ill-trained staff, the inadequate food and clothing in the damp cold buildings. When Germany invaded Greece converted the orphanage to a military hospital. The kids were thrown out and survived by begging in the villages and sleeping in shacks and chicken coops. While roaming the streets for food and shelter the nine year old boy was near death after a serious knee infection he stumbled into an Italian military hospital at a former monastery site in the Greek countryside. The hospital cook a simple Italian boy noticed this wreched kid picking and eating spaghetti droppings from the floor. He fed and raised the child, and brought him to the attention of the chief medical officer, who treated the boy and kept him as his assistant. From then on his life with all the turbulences and agonies extends from Greece to Brasil, a dramatic life until his final peaceful life in the USA.