A love story set on a Greek island during WWII that asks the hardest question: what does love owe to history, to duty, to survival? Pelagia and Corelli are beautifully drawn; the novel around them is richly comic and then catastrophically sad. The mandolin music runs through it like a leitmotif for joy in the face of annihilation.

The case for it, the case against, and the rest of the canon open with Pro.