“Set against one of the most horrible atrocities of the early twentieth century, the ethnic cleansing of Western Anatolia and the burning of the city of Izmir, Smyrna’s Ashes is an important contribution to our understanding of how humanitarian thinking shaped British foreign and military policy in the Late Ottoman Eastern Mediterranean. Based on rigorous archival research and scholarship, well written, and compelling, it is a welcome addition to the growing literature on humanitarianism and the history of human rights.”—Keith David Watenpaugh, University of California, Davis “Traces an important but neglected strand in the history of British humanitarianism, showing how its efforts to aid Ottoman Christians were inextricably enmeshed in imperial and cultural agendas and helped to contribute to the creation of the modern Middle East.”—Dane Kennedy, The George Washington University “Tusan shows vividly and compassionately how Britain’s attempt to build a ‘Near East’ in its own image upon the ruins of the Ottoman Empire served as prelude to today’s Middle East of nation-states.”—Peter Mandler, University of Cambridge “An original and meticulously researched contribution to our understandings of British imperial, gender, and cultural history. Smyrna’s Ashes demonstrates the long-standing influence of Middle Eastern issues on British self-identification. Tusan’s conclusions will engage scholars in a variety of fields for years to come.”—Nancy L. Stockdale, University of North Texas

September 1905. At the heart of the Ottoman Empire, in the ancient city of Smyrna, Scheherazade is born to an opium-dazed mother. At the very same moment, an Indian spy sails into the golden-hued, sycamore-scented city with a secret mission from the British Empire. When he leaves, 17 years later, it will be to the smell of kerosene and smoke as the city, and its people, are engulfed in flames. Told through the intertwining fates of a Levantine, a Greek, a Turkish and an Armenian family, this unforgettable novel reveals a city, and a culture, now lost to time. 'Fiercely intelligent, finely textured and achingly beautiful' Elif Shafak 'Utterly delightful' Buki Papillon 'This rich tale of love and loss gives voice to the silenced, and adds music to their histories' Maureen Freely, Chair, English PEN 'A must-read' Ayse Arman, Hu ̈rriyet 'A symphony of literature' Açik Radyo 'Defne Suman is a story-teller. She tells the story of how love, emotions and identities are influenced by socio-political events of a lifetime' Cumhuriyet Newspaper 'A wonderfully braided story of family secrets set in the magical city of Smyrna, told in luminous prose' Lou Ureneck, author of Smyrna, September 1922

Even up to the eve of the civil war, some observers saw the Lebanese system as essentially stable, and exhibiting some of the virtues of liberty and pluralism which had been commended by the French traveller de Volney a century before. But for others its structure was so seriously flawed as to be resolved only by revolution. The civil war resulted ultimately from a conglomeration of interdependent factors – the religious conflict of Christian and Shi’a Muslim, the social divisions exemplified in the ‘Belt of Misery’ around Beirut, and the ethnic frictions between the Arab host culture and the Occidentalised Maronites. This book, first published in 1980, is a lively and incisive study of one of the most ravaged countries of this generation.

"Mason reveals a glorious passion for literature, as well as an almost Whitmanesque openness to the ideas and emotions that inspire creative acts at all levels."―Library Journal (starred review) "An illuminating literary cartography with many fascinating ports of call.”―Kirkus Reviews "Mason expertly weaves the stories of great writers and places both ancient and new together into an imaginative literary odyssey."―Publishers Weekly “How are voices like places? They move through us as we move through them.” Celebrated poet David Mason explores surprising connections in geography and time, considering writers who traveled, who emigrated or were exiled, and who often shaped the literature of their homelands. He writes of seasoned travelers (Patrick Leigh Fermor, Bruce Chatwin, Joseph Conrad, Herodotus himself), and writers as far flung as Omar Khayyam, Jamal al-Din al-Afghani, James Joyce, and Les Murray. In the end, he turns to his own native region, the American West, with Wallace Stegner, Edward Abbey, Robinson Jeffers, Belle Turnbull, and Thomas McGrath. These essays are about familiarity and estrangement, the pleasure and knowledge readers can gain by engaging with writers’ lives, their travels, their trials, and the homes they make for themselves.

On one level Smyrna 1922 is a modern Greek tragedy replete with the elements of irony and horror. The Greeks, one of the victorious Allied powers during World War 1, were betrayed by their allies and their army driven into the sea at Smyrna by the forces of Mustapha Kemal, an insurgent leader to whom his former enemies had given considerable covert help. There followed an enactment of the week of orgy after the fall of Constantinople in 1453; pillage, rape and massacre culminating, in this instance, in the spectacular destruction by fire of Smyrna (now Izmir), considered an infidel city by the Turks because of its predominantly Greek character and population. Dobkin's study is a definitive work concerning a debacle deliberately soft pedalled and almost expunged from the memory of modern day man in the words of Henry Miller in The Colossus of Maroussi.

For many, “Greece” is synonymous with “ancient Greece,” the civilization that gave us much that defines Western culture today. But, how did Greece come to be so powerfully attached to the legacy of the ancients in the first place and then define an identity for itself that is at once Greek and modern? This book reveals the remarkable achievement, during the last three hundred years, of building a modern nation on the ruins of a vanished civilization—sometimes literally so. This is the story of the Greek nation-state but also, and more fundamentally, of the collective identity that goes with it. It is not only a history of events and high politics; it is also a history of culture, of the arts, of people, and of ideas. Opening with the birth of the Greek nation-state, which emerged from encounters between Christian Europe and the Ottoman Empire, Roderick Beaton carries his story into the present moment and Greece’s contentious post-recession relationship with the rest of the European Union. Through close examination of how Greeks have understood their shared identity, Beaton reveals a centuries-old tension over the Greek sense of self. How does Greece illuminate the difference between a geographically bounded state and the shared history and culture that make up a nation? A magisterial look at the development of a national identity through history, Greece: Biography of a Modern Nation is singular in its approach. By treating modern Greece as a biographical subject, a living entity in its own right, Beaton encourages us to take a fresh look at a people and culture long celebrated for their past, even as they strive to build a future as part of the modern West.