Microsoft Word 1 Arif thesis cover final doc

CHAPTER 9 – THE GREEK CASE: VENEZIS 
283 
By the term “Literature of the Asia Minor Disaster” a Greek reader understands 
something quite specific, which refers to a limited sub-set of all writing having some 
connexion with the relevant events. It is a work in prose; it is fictional or at least 
‘artistic’ rather than a simple memoir but it can, and generally does, purport to 
narrate a lived experience. Its early exponents were themselves direct victims of the 
war rather than just participants and observers, as in the Turkish case. The names 
which have endured apart from that of Venezis are those of Stratis Myrivilis and 
Stratis Doukas (b. Ayvali 1895 –d. Athens 1983)
12
. Myrivilis and Doukas had 
themselves fought in the Asia Minor campaign, while the younger Venezis, as 
already noted, had barely survived captivity in the Turkish labour battalions after the 
Greek defeat. They also differ from their Turkish counterparts in having no 
metropolitan recognition as writers before the war; this they gained chiefly through 
their war literature after the end of the 1920s. Although Myrivilis was first published 
in Mytilini in 1913 and the teenage Venezis had before 1922 some of his early work 
printed in periodicals published in Constantinople and Smyrna
13
, as already noted, 
neither had the recognition of writers like Halide Edip or Yakup Kadri. 
During the war the Greeks, just as the Turks, had tried their hand at atrocity 
propaganda. For example, the journalist K. Faltaits reported for the newspaper 
Εμπρός
(Forward) on the suffering of the non-Turks in Asia Minor, and his reports 
were published in a book form in 1921 under the title: 
Αυτοί είναι οι Τούρκοι. 
12
Beaton 1999, 131-140 supplies a succint introduction to their work. 
13
Valetas 1974, 106-107, also Mackridge 2004, 236

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