The Sun Sets in Smyrna: 1922

De: Bess Georgakakos

Narrado por: Virtual Voice

Was it absurd to believe so many cultures could coexist in a region where war has never ceased? In 1922, Smyrna was the beautiful cosmopolitan city by the Aegean Sea that was home to Turks, Greeks, Armenians, and Jews, to name a few. Taking place during the first genocide of the 20th century,

The Sun Sets in Smyrna 1922 begins with Vicki who finds her grandmother’s short, but revealing, story leading up to the expulsion of Christians from the city of Smyrna in modern-day Turkey. This book - the first of three books - examines the journey of Celia, Vicki’s grandmother, a teenaged Greek girl, who must overcome the horrors of humanity’s malevolence toward one another, and her desire to maintain the ideology she was taught to believe. Separated from what is left of her family, and trying to outrun enemy soldiers and the inferno that has engulfed her entire beloved city,

Celia tries to understand what the effects of rape, torture and evil do to an entire generation. As history has repeatedly exposed, the innocents are those who make the greatest sacrifice, and also reveal themselves to be true heroes… even when it’s inconvenient to acknowledge them.



“Bess Georgakakos has written a captivating novel of love in the face of brutality, rape and oppression. Based on her grandmother's real life experiences during the 1922 burning of Smyrna, the author vividly thrusts us into the horrors of war... A teenaged Greek girl struggles to survive the fire engulfing her city as she searches for her family...”
- Michael B. Davie, author, The Late Man



The Sun Sets in Smyrna takes place during a heartbreaking event in world history: the burning of Smyrna. Author Bess Georgakakos relates a remarkable fictional story based on her grandmother’s true experiences just over a century ago in the aftermath of the gutting inhumanity of the First World War. Many thousands of people died during that brittle month of September 1922, and Thousands more escaped the carnage to forge new lives in Canada, the US, and elsewhere.

Drawing on years of research and a powerful collection of family stories, Bess weaves an emotionally compelling tapestry of what it is to be human when the world around us is exploding into flames, both literally and figuratively. Of Greek heritage herself, Bess highlights the traumatic and bewildering exodus of Greek nationals from Smyrna—now Izmir—in what is now Turkey in the wake of the Turkish attack on almost anyone of non-Turkish background in 1922.

Over just a few weeks in September of that year, Greeks, Armenians, and people of countless other backgrounds, were savagely swept from their homes and communities—the men were abducted, the women were raped, and thousands of all genders were murdered. The seismic shock that blasted through the Greek community in the wake of the travesties committed in 1922 has reverberated down through the decades today in that one powerful question that the author asks through the writing of this book: how could this possibly happen to us?
- Susan Crossman, author, Shades of Teale

About the Author:
The only daughter of two Greek immigrants, Bess was born and raised in Toronto, where her culture had a vibrant presence. Stories of ancient heroes and a glorious history helped develop an interest in classical literature, the arts, and the human condition. She has lived in the Niagara Region for the past forty years, where, like many of us, she continues to strive for that magical balance of honouring a past and helping to shape the future.
Her first book, The Sun Sets in Smyrna 1922, is a testament to the struggles of those before us… to acknowledge their journeys and their outcomes, and what it means for generations to come.