Alki Zei has written a number of eminent novels and three of these have received the Mildred L. Batchelder Award for excellence in translating a foreign-language work for children. Wildcat under Glass has often been said to be the prequel to Petros' War. It tells of Melia and Myrto, two young girls who live on an island in the Aegean in 1936, just before the war. Their grandfather tells them myths and legends of the Ancient Greeks instead of "proper" stories. Their cousin, Nikos, a student in Athens, enchants them with the story of a wildcat, which stands embalmed in a glass case in the large living room of their house. Slowly, however, they find that the wildcat is a symbol for freedom, a term they come to value when Metaxas' dictatorship begins.

The novel ends just before the Second World War, where Petros' War picks up...