Aleko is a novel about an English teacher at a Greek boarding school who falls deeply and disastrously in love with one of his pupils. Published in 1934, this long-forgotten gem earned favorable reviews on release:
"Quite beautifully told, in glimpses and episodes: the colour of land and sea, the feel of sun and shade, seem to get into Mr. Matthew's prose." -- Gerald Gould, The Observer.
"Mr. Matthews has written a sincere and lovely book...warm and alive, bathed in the sunlight of a Grecian spring. It is a book to anger a good many people, but there are more, I fancy, who will fall under the spell of its charm." -- John Beevers, The Daily Dispatch.
"We are all androgynous, and in the infinite variations of the degree of the male and female characteristics in us, there is the possibility, as between any two people of the same sex, for infinite degrees of what is crudely known as homosexuality or lesbianism. Aleko is a description, done with a great deal of psychological competence and lyrical feeling, of one state or stage in that infinity of gradation." -- Herbert Read, The Spectator
"It stands upon its own merits as a story told with a skill and delicacy both of writing and psychological analysis which would give it distinction however unpleasant its topic." --The Times Literary Supplement.