Novel
Loukis Laras
Λουκής Λάρας
Dimitrios Vikelas · 1879
Opening lines
Κατά τας αρχάς του έτους 1821 ευρισκόμην εις Σμύρνην. Ήμην τότε εικοσαετής σχεδόν.
At the beginning of the year 1821 I was in Smyrna. I was then almost twenty years old.
Translation by Erostrate
Text quoted from gutenberg.org
Synopsis
An old merchant settled in London, Loukis Laras looks back on the year of his twentieth birthday. In 1822, the war reaches Chios: he flees with his father and his family, from Smyrna to the Cyclades, hides the household's money, haggles over his passage and counts the dead. He never gives himself the better role.
Context
The text appeared as a serial in the journal Estia at the beginning of 1879 and was translated the same year into French, under the title Louki Laras, by the Marquis de Queux de Saint-Hilaire, and into German; the French version was reissued as early as 1880, and the English one came in 1881, by Ioánnis Gennádios. The narrative draws on the journal of Loúkas Tzífos, a Greek merchant settled in the same town as the author, from whom he took his narrator. Its novelty lies in this narrator: where Greece celebrated Kanáris and Kolokotrónis, the book gives the floor to a passive witness whose whole effort consists in fleeing, and at the same time breaks with romantic emphasis through a deliberately simple language.
Who it is for
About a hundred pages in simple Greek, written to be read by everyone. It is worth knowing that the Chios massacre of 1822 left tens of thousands dead.
Prizes and reception
Jules Ferry placed the French version on the list of works that could serve as prize books for good pupils: a rare fortune for a Greek book of its century.
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