Farewell Anatolia

Ever wonder why different ethnic groups can live harmoniously for hundreds of years and then end up killing each other?

Dido Sotiriou tackles this question in Farewell Anatolia. This historical novel chronicles the tragedy of the Greeks of Asia Minor through the story of Manolis Axiotis, a poor farmer from a Greek Village near Ephesus. Before World War I, Greeks and Turks lived harmoniously in Anatolia. However, tensions erupted when the Ottomans sided with Germany and the Central Powers, and the state of Greece aligned with the Allies. Ethnic Greeks of the Ottoman Empire were not allowed to serve in the army. Instead, they faced forced conscription in the Ottoman Labor Battalions, where they worked in labor camps under harsh conditions show more and received little food. Manolis's conscription and escape from Labor Battalion was just the first stage of his hellish journey.

In 1919, the Greco-Turkish War erupted after Manolis returned to his village. Manolis and the other surviving village men now enlisted in the Greek Army and fought to make Greek Anatolia, which the Greeks settled in 800 BC, a part of the Greek state. The war went badly for the Greeks, and in 1922, Manolis fled to Smyrna in search of his family. A few days after his arrival, the Turkish army torched the Greek and Armenian sections of the city and massacred its inhabitants, killing between 10,000 to 25,000 people. Sotiriou vividly describes Manilos's harrowing escape to a Greek island where he became a refugee. By the end of the Greco- War, nearly 1.5 million refugees headed for Greece.

Farewell Anatolia captures the horrors of this period. Sotiriou believes the tragedy is due to more than ethnic tension. Instead, she attributes the growing animosity to the machinations of the Great Powers vying for control of Middle Eastern oil, corrupt politicians, and rising nationalist sentiment.

According to the Greek News Agenda, Sotiriou, a journalist, based the novel on a true story that fictionalized a written account provided by a refugee who worked in Piraeus. In Farewell Anatolia, she paints a harrowing portrait of a tragic period in Greek and Turkish history. Highly recommend. show less

77-Εντυπωσιακό, κατανοητό, ευκολοδιάβαστο. ΄Εχω διαβάσει αρκετά βιβλία με θέμα τη Μικρασιατική καταστροφή. Θα έλεγα πως είναι στη κατηγορία εκείνων που κρατούν τις ισορροπίες και περιγράφουν έντιμα και τις δυο πλευρές. Το διαβάζεις πολύ γρήγορα . Κάνει μια κοιλιά περίπου στη μέση , αλλά εκτίμησα την απλότητα και την αμεσότητα του .