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CHAPTER 9 – THE GREEK CASE: VENEZIS 
288 
The author’s preface to the 1945 edition says that he worked over the text three times 
in 1944 after finishing his novel 
Αολική Γη 
(Aeolian Earth) in response to horrors of 
the present
25
. There are in fact few changes between the 1931 and 1945 editions, 
even fewer of which are significant.
In the narrative form of the book 
Number 31328
the story is told in the first person 
by the eighteen year old Elias who was taken captive and sent to the labour battalions 
after the end of the Greek-Turkish war in September 1922. His captivity lasts for 
fourteen months. Elias survives, with the dice loaded heavily against him on repeated 
occasions, and is eventually shipped off from his homeland in Turkey to a very 
doubtful redemption in the metropolitan motherland, Greece. The title comes from 
the prisoner number that is assigned to him at a late stage of the ordeal. The narrative 
makes clear that once you got a number your chances of survival substantially 
improved since knowledge of your existence was now shared with Greece and 
agencies of the League of Nations. “Joy, joy!” exclaims the narrator when he is 
finally handed a tin tag with his number
26
. The title emphasised the irrelevance and 
dispensability of a man whose chances of survival materially improved once he 
became a cipher. 
The book consists of a straight-forward narration of a succession of episodes in the 
author’s ordeal, vividly described in a consciously spare, brutal and sarcastic 
language which was, in 1931, something of an innovation in Greek prose. It is 
25
Venezis, 2008, 21-23
26
Venezis 2008, 210

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CHAPTER 9 – THE GREEK CASE: VENEZIS 
289 
nonetheless carefully shaped as a work of art. A prominent example of this artfulness 
is the framing image that begins and closes the work. It begins on the morrow of the 
Greek defeat with the now famous words of sarcasm, “1922. Η Ανατολή γλυκύτaτη 
πάντα, γιά σονέτο – κάτι τέτοιο”
 
(1922. Anatoli (meaning ambiguously either ‘the 
East clearly referring to Anatolia as well ’ or ‘dawn) most sweet always, for a sonnet 
- something like that).
27
. It ends with Elias on the ship taking him from captivity just 
after he has had to tell his friend that the friend’s family is dead. “Soon the sun will 
rise”, says the friend indifferently having been asked if he feels cold. He does not use 
the word ‘anatoli’ or its cognates to refer to the rising sun. Elias sees an 
“indeterminate line in the sky that will become a flame”
 
(Kοιτάζω βαθιά αυτή την 
απροσδιόριστη γραμμή που πάει να γίνει φλόγα)
28
, the word ‘flame’ chosen to recall 
their ordeal and the destruction of the life they left behind. 
There are a number of consistent themes that traverse the narrative. The most striking 
is the brutalisation by captivity of the captives themselves. Elias feels ‘cruel joy’ 
when someone else is picked for death
29
; the prisoners feel relief when their barefoot 
march is paused to allow the guards to rape some girls
30
; put to removing a pile of 
human bones from view before the arrival of a League of Nations inspector they turn 
it into play.
31
. Another is the ‘universalist’ stance of the author. The dedication of 
27
Venezis 2008, 25. The sarcasm is toned down in the 1945 edition. The 1931 edition characterised the book on 
its title page as a 
Ρομάντσο
(Romance); this is omitted in 1945. Also, while both 1931 and 1945 editions share the 
second sentence:
 Όλα ήταν ήμερα και αβρά εκείνο το φθινόπωρο
(Everything was calm and dainty that autumn), 
the 1931 edition went on with a third sentence, cut out in the subsequent 1945 edition: Πολύ 
αβρά – βαρώνη, 
βαρωνίσκη Στάφ 
(Very dainty -baroness, little baroness Staff). 
28
Venezis, 2008, 319. 
29
Venezis 2008, 53. 
30
Venezis 2008, 114. 
31
Venezis 2008, 281. 

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