Return to Smyrna 3 – Light from the East

A revelatory look at the Asia Minor Catastrophe. The Ionian University of Smyrna — the cultural dimension of a military campaign.

The fortunes of the family of the physician Platon Pileidis. Family secrets and revelations. Everyday life in Smyrna, the personal rivalries of its inhabitants, the intercommunal conflicts of a great city that seems untouched by anything. How the coexistence of peoples turns into mutual slaughter. Amid the flames of the Asia Minor Catastrophe, acts of grandeur and of vengeance. Bonds of life and death reveal the decisive role of feeling in human action.

The historical events are rendered prismatically and vividly, the narrative illuminating every side of the war that sealed the fate of Asia Minor: the Greek landing at Smyrna, the successive victories, the march into the Salt Desert, the Turkish revolutionary movement, the internal struggles in both camps, the epic battle at the sources of the Sangarios, the counter-offensive of August 1922, the retreat, the ceaseless violence, the fire. A journey through time — Smyrna, Constantinople, Ankara. A turbulent path on which historical figures come alive in the drama’s final act: Eleftherios Venizelos, Mustafa Kemal, Chrysostomos, Metropolitan of Smyrna, Dimitrios Gounaris, İsmet (İnönü), the commanders-in-chief Paraskevopoulos and Papoulas, the writer Halide Edib, the celebrated Greek mathematician Constantin Carathéodory, and the High Commissioner Aristeidis Stergiadis — a controversial figure, presented on the basis of new, unpublished material. Light cast on the soul of two peoples. The epic of two nations. The final part of the trilogy RETURN TO SMYRNA.