Aivali: A Story of Greeks and Turks in 1922
Soloup
ISBN 978-1-935244-22-6
About the Book
A journey in time … a previous refugee crisis in the Mediterranean … the momentous historical events of 1922 seen through the eyes of third and fourth-generation descendants of those who lived and died through them.
This graphic novel dramatically tells the story of Greeks and Turks living as neighbors in the town of Aivali and other places along the Aegean Sea during the late Ottoman Empire; their subsequent expulsion from their ancestral homelands during a population exchange of Greeks and Turks in 1922, known to Greeks as "The Catastrophe" or the “Asia Minor Disaster”; and their subsequent lives as refugees.
“A wonderful book. As a talented story-teller and draftsman, Soloup proves to us that no series of events is too complex to be explained in simple drawings.” From the Introduction by Bruce Clark, author of Twice a Stranger
“Following in the footsteps of Art Spiegelman, Marjane Satrapi, Joe Sacco, or Jacques Tardi, Soloup, against the background of blood-stained chapters of History, focuses on human tragedy.” Kathimerini (Greece)
“A beautiful reflection on the creation of identities and the relevance of borders.” Science & Vie Guerres & Histoire (France)
“A contemporary mirror of historical tragedies that, on this land we live on, tend to somehow repeat themselves, like a broken record.” Radikal Kitap (Turkey)
“Poetic from first page to last, without ever ceasing to be accurate and perfectly documented.” L’ avis des bulles (France)
“Served by a realistic and expressive drawing, the whole is generous and touching.” DBD (France)
“A graphic novel about two motherlands, it bridges the two shores of the Aegean Sea.” Agos (Turkey)
About the Author
Soloup (Antonis Nikolopoulos) is a well-known political cartoonist and caricaturist who collaborates with major newspapers and magazines in Greece. He studied Political Sciences at the Panteion University and obtained a Ph.D. (Cultural Technology and Communication) at the University of the Aegean. He has published 13 books with comics and cartoons and his Ph.D. dissertation on the history of comics in Greece. His first graphic novel Aivali received the prize of the best comic and of the best scenario in 2015 Comicdom Athens. It has been translated into English, French, Spanish, and Turkish, and it is the first graphic novel to be the subject of an exposition of the Benaki Museum, from where it has travelled throughout Greece. In 2015 he participated in the collective exhibition “Ella” at Tricromia gallery in Rome and in the Ravenna festival. In 2019 Soloup published his new graphic novel The Collector, Six Stories about a Bad Wolf (Ikaros editions).
About the Translator
Dr. Tom Papademetriou is the Constantine and Georgiean Georgiou Endowed Professor of Greek History at Stockton University. A graduate of Hellenic College Holy Cross School of Theology, Dr. Papademetriou received his Ph.D. from Princeton University’s Department of Near Eastern Studies in Ottoman History. His research focuses on the history of non-Muslims under Ottoman rule. He directs research seminars at the Center for Asia Minor Studies in Athens, Greece and has co-authored a play, Stones from God, based on oral histories of Cappadocian Christians in the late Ottoman period.
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