The Ashes of Smyrna:
A Novel of the Greco-Turkish War
Author: REINHARDT, RICHARD
Original/Facsimile: Original
Year Printed: 1971
Binding: Hardcover
Publisher: Harper & Row Publishers
Price 22.00€
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KIRKUS REVIEW
A Cinemascopic mounting of Greece and Turkey's battle for Cyprus following World War I. It's brother against brother and neighbor against neighbor, and not just figuratively speaking. Of the sons of Hilmi Pasha, Kenan -- whose patriotic forays have already left him half-crazed and horribly maimed -- joins the nationalist forces of Mustapha Kemal. Abdulla, trained to European university Marxism, chooses instead to lead his own raggedy band of peasant proteges to the class war. On the Greek side there's Christos Trigonis, a wealthy middle-aged merchant who supports Venizelos and dreams like Alexander; his son George, a big cowardly boy who hides his doubts with heroism; and Lieut. Dimitris Kalapothakis, all good looks and self-serving guile, in whose person evil stalks to another triumph. What he -- and everyone else -- stalks over is the long-suffering body of Eleni Trigonis, who turns, jilted and pregnant, from Kalapothakis to the enraptured Abdulla, thus stoking the ire of all parties. Christos disowns Eleni, Kenan swears death to his brother, and obviously things cannot end happily. Only after much complication and flamboyant carnage do they end at ail in a state of numbed exhaustion which readers will probably share.
Between 1915 and 1922 the modern nation of Turkey emerged from the ashes of the Ottoman Empire. The rise of nationalism under the leadership of Mustafa Kemal brought with it clashes between the Ottoman's and the ethnic Christian minorities that had lived together for many centuries. The conflicts led to several wars between the Ottomans, Western Europe, Russia, and Greece, resulting in many massacres and atrocities by both sides. There were hundreds of thousands of deaths, as well as the forced evacuations of Ottoman Greeks and Armenians. The west did not intervene and turned a blind eye to the genocide. This video was made from rare film clips and news stories of 1922 which capture the pillage, and destruction of the Greek enclave of Izmir (Smyrna
