The Sun Sets in Smyrna: 1922
A Novel
Bess Georgakakos
Title: The Sun Sets in Smyrna: 1922 |
Was it absurd to believe so many cultures could coexist in a region where war has never ceased? In 1922, Smyrna was the beautiful cosmopolitan city by the Aegean Sea that was home to Turks, Greeks, Armenians, and Jews, to name a few. Taking place during the first genocide of the 20th century, The Sun Sets in Smyrna 1922 begins with Vicki who finds her grandmother’s revealing story leading up to the expulsion of Christians from the city of Smyrna in modern-day Turkey. This book - the first of three books - examines the journey of Celia, Vicki’s grandmother, a teenaged Greek girl, who must overcome the horrors of humanity’s malevolence toward one another, and her desire to maintain the ideology she was taught to believe. Separated from what is left of her family, and trying to outrun enemy soldiers and the inferno that has engulfed her entire beloved city.
"Bess Georgakakos has written a captivating novel of love in the face of brutality, rape and oppression. Based on her grandmother's real life experiences during the 1922 burning of Smyrna, the author vividly thrusts us into the horrors of war... A teenaged Greek girl struggles to survive the fire engulfing her beloved city as she searches for her family..." - Michael B. Davie, author, The Late Man
"Drawing on years of research and a powerful collection of family stories, Bess Georgakakos weaves an emotionally compelling tapestry of what it is to be human when the world around us is exploding into flames... Of Greek heritage herself, Bess highlights the traumatic and bewildering exodus of Greeks from Smyrna in the wake of the Turkish attack on almost anyone of non-Turkish background in 1922. Greeks, Armenians, and people of other backgrounds, were savagely swept from their homes — the men were abducted, the women were raped, and thousands of all genders were murdered. The seismic shock that blasted through the Greek community in the wake of the travesties committed in 1922 has reverberated down through the decades today in that one powerful question that the author asks through the writing of this book: how could this possibly happen to us?" - Susan Crossman, author, Shades of Teale |