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CHAPTER 1 - INTRODUCTION 
26 
appetite for the Asia Minor story is fed largely by reproductions of oral history and 
to the extent that it consumes fiction mostly composed after the Second World War. 
Even in respect of earlier periods the reader of Doulis will discover a large number 
of famous names in his pages, for example Kazantzakis, Prevelakis, Seferis, 
Theotokas, Varnalis as well as the obvious Myrivilis and Venezis. This is because he 
brings the story more or less to the date of publication (1977) but also because he 
reasonably regards the Asia Minor Disaster as an event of such importance as to 
influence the general outlook of almost every Greek writer who wrote after it. On the 
other hand, he carefully documents some early works such as those by Kostas 
Zoumboulidis and Socrates Prokopiou
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which he regards as of negligible literary 
interest but which more importantly for the purposes of the present study have 
completely disappeared from view. A similar fate was suffered by a more interesting 
work, 
Από την Αιχμαλωσία κατά το Ημερολόγιο του Αιχμαλώτου Αεροπόρου Β.Κ
. 
(From Captivity: According to the Diary of the Captured Airman V.K.), which was 
published in 1923, reprinted in 1924 and then completely forgotten until a reprint in 
2006. Doulis, who treated it as a real memoir, was not aware
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that it is in fact a 
work of fiction by an established writer who hid his identity and may or may not 
have reproduced some lived experience of a third party. Its formal analogy to the 
better known works by Venezis and Doukas will bring it a mention in Chapter 9
. 
I 
believe that it is more illuminating to examine closely an absolutely canonical work 
such as 
Number 31328 
which has had an enormous influence on public perception of 
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Doulis, 199-201 
41
Doulis, 49-54 

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