In Beyond the Aegean (1994), Elia Kazan (1909- ) completes his trilogy focused on the life of Stavros Topouzoglou, an Anatolian Greek whose dream it has always been to escape Turkish oppression by starting a new life in America. This he succeeds in doing in the first two novels (America, America, 1962; The Anatolian, 1982), but Beyond the Aegean finds him back in Turkey in 1921, drawn by the excitement of the Greek offensive directed toward Ankara and the opportunity to profit by buying up Turkish rugs at bargain prices. The novel's plot involves Stavros's various relationships with his business partners, his former lover Althea, his siblings and mother, and Thomna, an Anatolian woman who sees in Stavros the fulfillment of her own dream of life in America. Although he is not sexually attracted to her at the start, his feelings evolve quickly, due to his appreciation of her shrewdness and feisty spirit. He finally grows to love her, and perversely, from her point of view, intends to make a home with her in Greek Anatolia.

Beyond the Aegean is as much the story of the Asia Minor catastrophe as it is of its hero. Stavros, in his pompous certainty that the Greek army will easily achieve its goal, embodies the enthusiasm with which so many contemporary Greeks embraced the Great Idea. Greek victories against Serbs and Bulgars in World War I had boosted confidence. Success seemed a matter of destiny. But before too long, it is clear that the war is not going well. First, the Greeks are stopped short of their crucial objective, Ankara. Then there is a pause, the Greek retreat, in which Stavros is involved, and, finally, the overwhelming Turkish offensive. Kazan puts Stavros in key places to make events more realistic. In particular, he uses his hero's acquaintance with Archbishop Chrysostomos to give him access to the councils of generals and even King Constantine.

The book's climax is the burning of Smyrna, depicted in cinematographic detail. Stavros escapes aboard an American boat. He, like Greece, must adapt to a new reality. In Athens, he manages to combine business acumen with a sense of altruism by helping some of the refugees from this disaster. Though still connected with Greece, he lives out his life in New York, where he has success in business and finds a certain peace. But he has lost Thomna, who, swept away by the chaos of Smyrna's last days while Stavros was saving his rugs, ultimately reclaims her life in the New World with his brother.

Coincidentally, the masterpiece of Anatolian Greek writer Elias Venezis (1904-73) was also published in the United States under the title Beyond the Aegean (1943; trans., 1950 in England as Aeolia, 1957 in the United States). Set in Anatolia in the years before World War I, this autobiographical novel complements Kazan's trilogy by depicting in detail the way of life destroyed by the catastrophe and by keeping to a rural setting, as opposed to Kazan's focus on cities. The brilliance of this narrative derives from its conflation of the innocence of childhood and its growing awareness of the darker adult world with the Eden of Anatolia and its premonitions of the coming fall into war and disaster.

The first section of Jeffrey Eugenides' (1960- ) Pulitzer Prize-winning novel Middlesex (2002) describes the escape of the grandparents of the novel's hermaphrodite protagonist from Asia Minor. Desdemona and Eleutherios (Lefty) are orphaned siblings living in Bursa when the Greek offensive starts to unravel in 1921. The confusion that accompanies the rout of the Greek army sweeps them up just as the problem of dealing with the young man's sexuality emerges and throws them together in a desperate attempt to escape through Smyrna, which, with the protecting war boats of the Great Powers in the harbor, seems to them a safe choice. The Turkish army loots and rapes and murders, and the carnage drives the Greeks, spurned by the warships, into the harbor. Lefty manages to secure passage to Greece for himself and his sister by pretending to be a French citizen. In the passions of the moment, they are drawn toward an incestuous union, consummated on the voyage to America. The fifth chromosome with a single recessive gene is thus unleashed. Skipping a generation, it produces the hermaphrodite, Calliope Helen (Cal) Stephanides, born in Detroit in 1960, the narrator and focus of attention of the rest of the novel, which then turns to the immigrant experience of the family and to the complicated life of its protagonist.

Ernest Hemingway's (1899-1961) "On the Quai at Smyrna," a brief but powerful view of the slaughter in the harbor of Smyrna, was published in In Our Time, a set of sketches (1924). Hemingway then used the vignette to begin, and to set the tone for, his first collection of short stories, In Our Time (1925).

Free term papers are not written to satisfy your specific instructions. You can use our professional writing services to buy a custom written research paper, term paper, or essay on World Literature at affordable price. CustomTermPapers is the best solution for those who seek help in writing term papers, essays, and research papers related to World Literature and other relevant topics.