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340 pages, Paperback
First published January 1, 1962
I have known about this book for quite a few years. My uncle highly recommended it to me. He surprised me, because I never imagined him as a reader. Last year, I finally acquired a copy via the Internet. It had been sitting on my shelf waiting to be read since. Every now and then, it would scream out to me to put down the book I was reading and read it, but I ignored it. January 2nd, it screamed so loudly I could ignore it no longer. I put on a couple of CDs of Greek movie soundtrack music, grabbed a glass of wine and headed for the armchair. I was drawn in immediately, lapping up every detail.
My maternal grandparents hailed from Asia Minor, near Smyrna (present day Izmir), so this book means something to me; I was reading a novel written by someone who lived through the turmoil that led up to the Great Catastrophe of 1922. Years that my grandmother and her family lived before the family were expelled in 1922. My grandfather moved to Australia in 1914 when the novel begins, so it was easy to imagine what he would have endured. Would he have survived as did the protagonist, Manolis Axiotis?
For me, this book was not fiction, but reality. It graphically describes the horrors of war. Neither side is innocent; both are guilty of atrocities. Soteriou gave Manoli a conscious and morals, instead of painting him as a fierce patriot. He was torn between being Ottoman and being Greek, but his first and only instinct was to survive. The countries of the Entente were playing power games outside and away from the Middle East which ulitmately decided the destiny of millions of people--many who couldn't see it coming until it was too late--like pawns on a board. Manoli's animosity towards these powers was contagious. I had to remember I live almost 100 years later in a world that is very different, but one which is still the very much the same.
What made this even more poignant was the fact that January 2nd was the 23rd anniversary of my grandmother's death. Of all the books that remain unread on my shelf about this period in modern Greek and Turkish history, this is the one she wanted me to read.