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Reviews for Paradise Lost

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    Another story from the century of conflict4

    John Middleton Smyrna 1922 is upsetting to read: there is always a disaster lurking in the background, and when it happens it is horrible indeed. The consequences of war are all too often visited on innocent civilians in the wrong place at the wrong time, and this, the closing chapter of the Ottoman Empire, is no exception.

    Giles Milton once again has picked out a little bit of history and expanded a complete story out of it (Nathaniel's Nutmeg is an example of a tiny hinge of fate, for instance). This time around, the focus is on Smyrna (Izmir), once a thriving trade port on the coast of Asia Minor. The Levantines - European expats - ran a mercantile community, employing a large chunk of the local populace. Smyrna was a mixed city, with Greeks, Armenians and Turks, as well as the Europeans, and a thriving American expat community.

    All this was lost with the disastrous expedition into Anatolia by the Greek army in 1922. There is an early wrinkle in with the revocation of the concessions - trade relaxations - on which this foreign fortune was built, with this being a source of apparent pride among local Turks, but this merely silent foreshadowing of the disaster to come.

    In between, we see Smyrna during WWI under Rahmi Bey, and under Greek annexation in 1919. Through all this there is a "ancien regime" feeling in the air: old power and wealth about to be lost in a sea of blood. As it turns out, the blood was largely shed by the servants of the Levantines - a point deftly made by Milton - and Smyrna stands a proxy for the genocide of the period, bu Greek and Turk alike.

    That is the facts of the book neatly; I won't all cover it over again in any greater detail than I have above. What is horrifying (and occasionally uplifting) is the reactions of various civilised men and women to the fall of Smyrna, and how much easier it is to do evil to others than to do good in such a time.

    This is an excellent study of little-known history, told like a novel. This is the horror of war, from the point of view of the civilians who suffered rather than the soldiers that fought and died. by John Middleton

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