About the lecture

The Greek reader’s sense of the Asia Minor Disaster, when it comes to literary productions written within the 1922-1950 timespan of this exhibition, has come to be dominated by two works, both by writers from Ayvalik (Kydonies): Elias Venezis’ Number 31328 and Stratis Doukas’ The Story of a Prisoner. The main thrust of this lecture will provide a comparison of these two works, near-contemporary in their first book form (1931 and 1929 respectively) and both extensively revised by their authors over the years. Despite their common theme of captivity and eventual escape, the two works in fact deploy very different technical means and raise rather different questions about the genre of testimony and about life-writing more broadly. Each work offers much food for thought in this sobering anniversary year.

About the speaker

David Ricks is Professor Emeritus of Modern Greek and Comparative Literature, King’s College London and Honorary Senior Research Fellow, University of Birmingham. He is an Editor of the journal Byzantine and Modern Greek Studies and serves on the advisory board of the Archive of Performances of Greek and Roman Drama at his alma mater, the University of Oxford. He has written widely on modern Greek literature, especially poetry, and often with a focus on the classical tradition. His versions from modern Greek poets, among them Cavafy, Karyotakis, and Ganas, have appeared in magazines and anthologies.