When the Greek crisis erupted after the advent of the leftwing government, the world soon came to identify one unconventional man who came to represent Greek resistance to the perceived threat of Grexit - the unceremonious kicking out of Greece from the Euro.

This was a tall professor unlike the rest of the socialist Cabinet, a man who shockingly jumped on a bike, (a Harley?) at the end of a ministerial press conference and roared away.

Yanis Varoufakis was unconventional in more ways than just his preferred mode of transportation. He spoke in English rather than Greek and more importantly expressed concepts that could be understood by all.

All that is history now. Greece is now well on its way out of the crisis. Scenes of everyday life in Athens show a vibrant capital city submerged with tourists.

Gone is the almost Communist atmosphere of the socialist years, with strikes galore when Greece faced suspicion and mistrust from most Europeans led by the redoubtable German minister Wolfgang Schauble. Gone too are the scenes of abject poverty with the banks closed and the elderly being forced to rummage in rubbish to find anything to eat.

Varoufakis spearheaded the resistance by the Greek Left to what he described as the Troika - the Commission and the European Central Bank - in its bid to get the Greeks to understand reason. At one point, as he says in his two books on the crisis, And the Weak suffer What they Must? and Adults in the Room, he tinkered with the idea of unilaterally taking Greece out of the Eurozone and creating a new currency. Then he was eased out and the government averted the worst.

I saw all this happening over one endless night in Brussels. The socialist government surrendered and soon it was out of office. Sweet reason triumphed.

Varoufakis returned to teaching at the university. His name now carried cachet across the world and this book is the result.

In it he addresses his daughter Xenia, then 15, who had gone to live in Australia through the worst years of the crisis. And her fundamental questions on life, such as 'Why is there so much inequality?'.

Drawing on memories of his daughter and her childhood in Greece and on well-known stories from the classics, such as Oedipus and Faust to Frankenstein and The Matrix, the author tries to explain the 'black magic' of finance.

Not all that he says helps one understand the 'arcana' of finance but I single out the penultimate chapter as a very good explanation of how international finance grows and develops. Even for just this chapter the book makes worthwhile reading.