Apollonias Street. Novel. Second edition

It is a literary work of art with strong autobiographical elements. Through its pages one can learn both the recent history of the city of Thessaloniki and the chronicle of the settlement of the refugees of the Asia Minor Catastrophe. This period contributed decisively to the shaping of the city as we know it today. The author vividly describes the creation of the street of the same name, which – like many others – owes its existence to Asia Minor refugees, and makes direct and indirect references to the difficult years that followed.

The author describes in detail the daily efforts of the refugees of the Asia Minor Catastrophe of 1922 to become active members of the society of the city of Thessaloniki, thus covering most of the interwar period. It describes vividly and in detail the daily struggle of uprooted people to survive and “build” their lives metaphorically and literally from scratch. It was a merciless daily struggle, as they had to build their homes in rough, rugged terrain where until then the dealings of rogue elements took place, while at the same time they had to practice whatever profession they had in a society that treated them most of the time as outsiders.

The most deserving of them manage not only to survive, but to fully integrate into the social fabric of their new homeland, having earned the honour, trust and respect they deserve. But they do not forget for a moment their Asia Minor origins and the uprooting they suffered from their own Mother Earth. The Homeland, lost forever, is an integral part of their existence and its presence is strongly felt in every activity of their daily life, whether it concerns particular individual habits of each of them or their interpersonal, social and professional relations as a whole with their new fellow citizens, the “old” residents of Thessaloniki. Thus, once again the city of Thessaloniki confirms its timeless and indelible multicultural character, as the ‘foreign’ Asia Minor mixes with the pure Greek element of Old Greece, while the strong Jewish presence and the remnants of the Muslim world complete a not always harmonious multidimensional coexistence.

The narrative, however, is not limited to the interwar period, but focuses on the effects of the Second World War on the everyday life not only of the inhabitants of “Apolloniados Street” but also of the whole of Thessaloniki. Everything that used to divide the people of the city into Greeks, Refugees, Jews and Muslims loses its importance, is forgotten, as now everyone, regardless of their origin, social status, economic status or religion, has to face the economic destruction, the front, the sirens, the bombings, the loss of loved ones, the war itself. The difficult years of the Occupation that follow make the daily struggle for survival under the most adverse conditions common to all. Hunger, deprivation, executions leave no room for illusions. Neither universal human values nor life itself have any value any more, a fact confirmed by the ‘concentration’ of the numerous Jewish population of Thessaloniki by the occupier and their transfer to the concentration camps of Europe.

The central character of the novel is a young boy, Argyris, who shares his thoughts and experiences with the reader. His early years of adolescence coincide with the harsh reality of that time, which leaves him no room for dreams and illusions. The Allied bombing, combined with the atrocities of the German, Italian and Bulgarian conquerors and the greed and inhumanity of their Greek collaborators, destroys not only the material world around him. The daily abuse of people by people destroys any trace of trust and at the same time any desire for contact with the outside world, with the result that Argyris finds that day by day both he and the other people become alienated from their physical environment, isolated and withdrawn – each in his own way – into their inner world.

Argyris will have an additional opportunity to realize the negative consequences of alienating people when he is forced to work as an older son to feed the family, first as a “glazier” by painting the shoes of passers-by and later by selling cigarettes and nuts in nightclubs. There he will meet black marketeers, smugglers, collaborators of the conquerors, corrupters, prostitutes and all sorts of people, often even coming into contact with death itself. Despite the horrors he experiences, he insists on hoping that the evil will soon come to an end. Unfortunately, the longed-for Liberation will not bring with it Redemption, as it will be the trigger for the ensuing Civil War. Argyris will find out at the end of the novel that the end of a war does not necessarily mean that Peace reigns in people’s lives and hearts.