On the island of Samothrace, whose shore once was graced by the greatest of classical sculptures, the natives are born dispossessed. "We mourn our Nike", they lament. "Buried for centuries by an earthquake, she was unburied in fragments by a pillaging Frenchman and shanghaied to Paris aboard a French freighter". Imprisoned in the Louvre since 1863, this beautiful statue seems nothing less than the ancient island's kidnapped soul. "We have with France, you see, an unsettled score. Repatriation. Bring back our winged one, bring her home".

No one feels Samothrace's loss as deeply as Photi Anthropotis. Official keeper of the Nike's findspot, the damaged, hapless Photi dreams of glory, of rescuing his goddess in distress. He is abetted in his fantasy by two beautiful women, an innocent, love-starved French museum guard and a glamorous, narcissistic American documentary filmmaker. Together they hatch the art theft of the century -- together, but each to his or her own ends. Unpredictable in its turns of plot, sparkling in its verbal fireworks, Nike is a charming tour de force and the auspicious debut of a delightful new storyteller.