"“Smyrna in Flames is a shattering and remarkable work, full of merciless cruelty and atrocity, with horror and despair on almost every page, a prose poem of an historical hellscape.” —Simon Schama, author of Rembrandt's Eyes, Landscape and Memory, Rough Crossings, television documentaries The History of Britain, The Story of the Jews, Civilisations.

"Passionate, brave, and deeply felt, Homero Aridjis's novel is a powerful read. Told through the eyes of his father, this is the compelling narrative of a young person confronting History with a capital 'H' -- the intimate account of a human catastrophe whose devastating repercussions are still being felt in the Aegean area today, a century later."—Ersi Sotiropoulos, author of Zigzag through the Bitter Orange Trees (2013 winner, Greek State Prize for Literature and the Book Critics’ Award) and What’s Left of the Night (2018, winner, 2019 National Translation Award

The Greek Embassy in Washington DC is setting up speaking engagements for Homero Aridjis at their Embassy and consulates around the country including Florida, California and New York.They are also in conversation with the Mexican Embassy and the Mexican Cultural Institute who are interested in setting up presentations at their embassies and consulates and at universities and colleges with strong Greek Studies and Latin American Studies programs.An event at Politics and Prose is under consideration as part of the tour.

       Saturday, September 9. An ashen sun gleamed in the sky like a moldy apple. The mirage of a city at peace was breaking up, and every opportunity for pillage was pounced on. Finding them unguarded, the locals looted the Greek army storehouses. Horse-drawn wagons packed with barrels of cooking oil, sacks of flour, and cartons of sugar were led through the streets by men, women, and children who reckoned that these goods were better off taken by them than by the Turks.        Gangs of chettes, the thieving, criminal swine used by the Turkish army as irregulars, materialized in public spaces and shopping streets. People were convinced that some had been there since May 1919, the date of the Greek landing, and more had been steadily infiltrating the city thereafter. Descriptions of their physical traits were frequent preludes to tales of atrocity and murder.         “The barbarians have arrived. They were expected in three days’ time, but they came today,” said Seferiades, the whitehaired man with round spectacles he had seen in the café, to Nicias. At school this man had told him about Constantine Cavafy, the poet he encountered in Athens in 1905, both having been to the Hermes School of Commerce in Alexandria, after which they had kept in touch through postcards. Seferiades had sent Cavafy one captioned “Marché aux figues dans les bazars,” dated Smyrna, September 29, 1911. The last message he received from Cavafy in Alexandria was a poem, “The God Abandons Antony.”        “What do you mean?”        “The barbarians have arrived.”        “The Turks entered the city. They came from the south, burning villages and towns. The girls at the college saw them go by as they were doing calisthenics in the schoolyard. They turned their heads to look at the chettes. The chettes all fixed leering gazes upon the Levantine maidens with arms aloft in their black-and-white blouses and long skirts over laced bootees. Bournabat had fled. The houses were in darkness. Five thousand chettes arrived bent on killing, plunder, and rape.”        The man peered short-sightedly at Nicias, studying his reaction.        “Have we met before? Where?”        “At school.”        “I know you met Professor Seferiades, but I don’t know whether Professor Seferiades met you.”        The sound of trotting horses could be heard. Turkish troops were entering the city. Greeks and Armenians ran to conceal themselves in homes and stores.        “Don’t pretend you don’t know; pack your belongings and bid Smyrna farewell, for Smyrna has betrayed you. My own escape will be through the grand front door of death.” With these words Alexis Seferiades climbed onto a block of stone. White hair ruffled by the breeze, eyes bright behind thick lenses, he gazed into the distance, listening to the sea. He began to recite: “When they saw Patroclus dead, the horses of Achilles began to weep; their immortal nature was upset deeplyby this work of death they had to look at.” Then he steppeddown, and walked away from the Turks.       How far would he get? Where had he come from and wherewas he going? Where had he got hold of that green velvetjacket? Nicias watched him move off down the narrow street,uncertain whether his presence was real or an aural hallucination.As the other turned the corner he recalled that Seferiadeshad been the first, on the subject of the “incantation of light,”to tell his class about The Student of Prague—that film inwhich a young man disposed to magic duels to the death withhis mirror double.       The Turkish cavalry was riding down the harbor road, havingsecured the docks with emplacements of cannon and other ordnance,while the side streets were blocked by infantry platoons.This was the formal entrance into Smyrna of MustafaKemal’s troops. The mounted regiment, all in black, their inkyfezzes displaying a red crescent and red star, advanced amongbanners and scimitars. Battle-hardened foot soldiers with Mongolianfeatures marched with a disdainful air, looking neitherright nor left, towards the Konak, where they would hoist thenational flag at the top of the main building.       The Turkish population welcomed their army by decoratingshop windows, house-fronts, trees, and lampposts with piecesof red fabric. The ponderous strains of patriotic music rang outfrom the balconies, and women holding armfuls of flowerscame over the water on launches. In the main square, aroundthe monumental clock tower and its four fountains, men wavedred flags and brandished sabers, rifles, and portraits of Kemal as though to defy the Greek and Armenian inhabitants. Some cavalrymen called out to the terrified people be afraid!”       Among the onlookers at this parade of Kemalist troops underGeneral Murcelle Pasha were Levantines from Bournabat,Boudja, Cordelio, and Paradise, mixed with many Armeniansand Greeks, men and women who stared in bafflement at sucha ferocious show of strength.       “I believe I’ve seen the fellow before,” said an Englishmanwho was in Smyrna to buy carpets.       “Who?” an American schoolteacher inquired.       “Murcelle Pasha. The other night I came across him in asodomite establishment—one that escaped being closed byStergiades because it’s run by foreigners—dressed as a woman;but don’t tell a soul. To see the wrong person in the wrong placecan be fatal.”       The rejoicing continued until an unseen hand lobbed a grenadein front of the Passport Office, causing superficial facewounds to a Turkish officer. That was the pretext for the Kemalisttroops stationed in front of the railings that protected theKonak to march into the Armenian quarter and begin the killing.       It might have seemed a simple matter for the Turks to overrunthis neighborhood, but the area was a densely populatedwarren of small streets and whitewashed, red-roofed houses.Grande Rue Armenienne Resadiye, Rue Russan, Grand RueBasmahane, Rue Vemian, Rue Ste.-Paraskevi, Rue Sahin,Grand Rue Fethiye, Rue Moda, Grand Rue Meles, Grand RueKemer, Rue Suzan, Rue Derder, Rue Kabouroglou. Streets thatlinked churches, hospitals, schools for boys or girls, railway stations,and big mansions such as that of Dr. Garabed Hatcherianand those of the Aram, Berberian, Atamian, Kasparian, Hartunian,Balikjian, and Arakelian families; here too lived HovekimUregian, who had angled a mirror in his corner window so as toobserve from within the house the “inferno of blood” and“small girls being defiled in the street by the Turks.”       The bands of irregulars, with their crossed bullet belts andfistfuls of rifles, garrotes, and daggers, were breaking into shopsand homes to commit pillage, murder, and havoc. Their appearanceheralded violence and death. Earlier Nicias had seen themgo by in gangs of twenty or thirty, in the direction of the citycenter and towards the villas of Cordelio, Boudja, Bournabat,and Paradise.       “What’s going on next door?” he heard an Armenian womansay, leaning out of a window.       “Probably a cat trying to get out,” her husband replied fromthe darkened room beyond.       “It’s not an animal; it’s a man with blood on his hands. I’mafraid for the children we left alone in the house,” the womansaid. When she went into the street she was stopped by a gaggleof chettes who began to surround her, pointing, pawing, liftingher clothing, some roaring with laughter, others smoking hashish.“Let me pass!” She struggled to fight them off with mountingterror.       “Leave not a single one alive; grind them into the ground;nobody will obstruct our road to victory!” The words slid outsideways through the crooked mouth of a bandit with a sharpsnout and yellow eyes; his neck, poking up above the whitecloths covering his chest and shoulders, appeared deformed.Women and children could be heard screaming inside ahouse. The cries were first piercing, then faint. A smell ofgrime, dead meat, and blood-soaked clothing rose from a brokendrain.       Hiding in every room were women, old people, children, andmen who had survived deportation by the Ottomans to Changra.The sick, the dying, and the dead had been left to rot on thefloor. Others watched the movements of a chette recklesslyengaged in plunder and rape. Nicias got a glimpse of his handson the breasts of a little girl. Like a louse he explored hernakedness, slid over her body, bit her, pinched her, pecked her.Dishes and flower vases went crashing. Her father who camebetween them was stabbed with a knife.       The little girl rushed out of a back door. Beside herself withfear, she clung to Nicias’s knees. In a mixture of Armenian andGreek she begged him to save her. But the chette dragged herback indoors, threw her face down on the rug and penetratedher like a dog. Her younger brother, hiding in the adjoiningroom, scratching on the windowpane, watched the deflowering.The Turkish soldiers cordoned off the Armenian quarter.The inhabitants were no longer safe behind their own frontdoors. Families locked down in their homes began to feel helplessand forsaken. Outside, bands of chettes communicated bymeans of blood-curdling squeals.        The stores pulled down their shutters. The theft of flour, oil,sugar, and other staples had become commonplace. Food wasgrowing scarce. Turkish soldiers broke down the doors of ostensiblydeserted houses with their rifle-butts to commit robbery,rape, and murder. When the neighbors realized what was goingon, they grew panic-stricken; afterward they crept fearfullytowards the scene of the crimes, and as fearfully backed awayonce they learned the facts.       In Frank Street the chettes were stealing jewelry, rugs, cash,fine clothes, chocolates, wine, household goods, and anythingelse of value. In a service area at the back of a store, Nicias sawthe irregulars tip a pan of scalding lentil soup into the lap of acook, who ran out into the street squealing with pain; but at thesight of another bunch of bandits, she fled back in again.       “In the suburb of Boudja, the cavalry killed Oscar and Cleode Jongh. For lack of caskets the Dutch couple’s bodies couldnot be buried and were left beneath a tree, among other treeswhere abused Armenian girls had been suspended naked fromthe branches, some by their belts, others by their hair.” Thiswas the last news Nicias heard that night.