Author Archive

Some exquisite novels written about Anatolia and The Great Catastrophe

If you mix the backdrops of World Wars, an Ottoman Empire at its sunset–before night—then dawn of the modern state of Turkey, together with a fairly newly liberated nation of Greece redefining itself with strong echoes of its past calling her: Byzantium, idealized cradle of democracy, Constantinople, lands lost… with superpowers playing countries like a chessboard, all this igniting ethnic and religious strife… This and more (a historian would tell you), and you get Smyrna September 13th 1922.  Not so long after the Armenian genocide.

Smyrna (now geographically Izmir) was a cosmopolitan city off the coast Asia Minor. Like so much of Anatolia and Ottoman territory, it was multi-ethnic and multi-religious. Many Greeks lived in Asia Minor. Best to read the many books and some pages devoted to what happened on this date–the city was burned, after weeks of about half a million Greeks, and Armenians, huddled on the quay after the Greek army collapsed in its reach East (murder, rape, drowning, forced labor which led to death, suicide by drowning were the lot of these many).  It’s referred to in Greek as “The Great Catastrophe”. And the survivors of this tragedy would move on to form a new identity for the modern Greek state together with the forced population exchanges between Turkey and Greece soon after, most of them being Greek. The refugees of Asia Minor brought agrarian skill, middle class professions, worldliness and their own signature to the arts, that would eventually weld itself into a new Greek identity, along, of course with the poverty of uprooted lives. The most famous one you know, is probably Aristotle Onassis.

For The Funeral Singer: Vasili and his sister are refugees from Asia Minor. They both processed what happened and what it means to survive quite differently. Because, yes, one is a man, another a woman. Because of their ages. Because of what they wanted out of life before every day of their lives became Smyrna.

The Funeral Singer the artist’s book in this setting of Smyrna 1922 and Athens 1944, releases September 13th 2022. Order now. The book comes with a silk lapis lazuli book sleeve and a curated reading and arts list bookmark for the themes of this period and culture.

We’re back in Morningside Bookstore, in the past, as the store doesn’t exist anymore. Time doesn’t stop us at the Janus Point. As for you: that’s what wormholes are for.

Second installment of the historical background of some of the non-fiction books that inform The Funeral Singer, which Janus Point Press is publishing this Fall 2022. The most instrumental find for Stephanie strolling their basement section (was it weekly?) which really was an antique shop of modern Greece (clothing, trinkets, books): the book The Death Rituals of Rural Greece by Loring M. Danforth, photography by Alexander Tsiaras. It helped birth a novel, then a condensed short story.

The book documents many of the traditions in Greek Orthodoxy and its death rituals in rural Greece, published in 1982. You don’t just die and get buried, the end. There is a period where one waits for the flesh to slough off the bones, indicting sins have left the person. This is confirmed after about five years, at an exhumation of the grave. Death is women’s work, as the pages will show you. Enter The Widow in our story, who is preparing for the exhumation of her late husband Mani. She’s more than earned the capital “T” in her title. But back to the dead: the bones are then stored in the village ossuary after the exhumation. If the bones still had flesh though….  it’s a troubling sign. Among other things, it could mean a revenant, the undead, walked the village, causing much trouble.

And what of the funeral song? That will be our third installment, bringing us to the title of our first book: The Funeral Singer.