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Smyrna in Flames: A Novel by Homero Aridjis

Smyrna in Flames: A Novel by Homero Aridjis

$19.95

Translated from the Spanish by Lorna Scott Fox

A co-publication of Dryad Press and Mandel Vilar Press
ISBN: 9781942134756/ Paper (flaps)  $19.95 / 6 x 9 / 168 pp, B&W photographs
ISBN: 9781942134763 / eBook /  $14.99 

“Homero Aridjis tells the story of his father’s journey through a nightmarish labyrinth of carnage and despair.   The reader emerges with feelings of outrage and deep gratitude for this unforgettable account.” Atom Egoyan, Armenian-Canadian film director and screenwriter of films as The Sweet Hereafter and Ararat 

“A shattering and remarkable work. . . a prose poem of an historical hellscape.” Simon Schama, author of Rembrandt’s Eyes, Landscape and Memory, Rough Crossings The History of Britain

“As a lyric exploration of human failings and cruelty it is honest and powerful.” Times Literary Supplement (TLS), A.E. Stallings, author of This Afterlife: Selected Poems and translator, Lucretius: The Nature of Things

“The book’s power is unmistakable. It lies in its indelible images, and in the very fact that Homero Aridjis, named after the greatest poet of Ionia, returns to his own bloody history by rewriting his father’s memoirs, by giving the dead a voice, by returning the story to its owners . . .  the author’s and translator’s efforts have produced a heroic book.” Stephanos Papadopoulos, The Los Angeles Review of Books

Links to Full Reviews:
Times Literary Supplement ( A.E. Stallings)
Los Angeles Review of Books ( Stephanos Papadopoulos)

This powerful historical novel is inspired by the haunted memories of the author’s father, Nicias Aridjis — a captain in the Greek army, who returned from the fields of battle to Smyrna, 50 miles northwest of his hometown of Tire, in 1922, just as Turkish forces captured this cosmopolitan port city. Through Nicias’s eyes, Smyrna in Flames lays bare the brutalizing and murderous events in Smyrna that occurred between September 13 and 22, 1922. The rampaging Turks commingle in his mind with echoes of the ancient Greek poets who sang of Greece’s past glories. Images and voices, suggestive of Homeric ghosts, conjure up a mythological, historical, and geographical quest that, in the manner of classical epic, hovers between the heroic and the horrendous.

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Homero Aridjis, born in Contepec, Michoacán, Mexico in 1940, has published 19 collections of poetry, 17 novels, and 15 volumes of short stories, plays, essays, and books for children. His work has been translated into fifteen languages.  Among numerous books translated into English, his 1492 The Life and Times of Juan Cabezón was a  New York Times Notable Book of the Year. 

He has been Mexico’s Ambassador to Switzerland, the Netherlands and UNESCO, and served two terms as International President of PEN International, during which he strove to make PEN less Eurocentric.

A visiting professor at New York University, Indiana University and Columbia University, Aridjis was Nichols Professor for the Humanities and the Public Sphere at the University of California, Irvine. 


Lorna Scott Fox, the translator, is a journalist, editor and translator who lived for many years in Mexico and Spain. Her writings have appeared in the London Review of Books and the Times Literary Supplement. Her translations from Spanish and French include Teresa, My Love by Julia Kristeva, Marriage as a Fine Art by Julia Kristeva and Philippe Sollers, Petite Fleur by Iosi Havilio and Narcoland by Anabel Hernández.  

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“Smyrna in Flames is a shattering and remarkable work, full of merciless cruelty and atrocity, with horror and despair on almost every page, a prose poem of an historical hellscape.” Simon Schama, author of Rembrandt’s Eyes, Landscape and Memory, Rough Crossings The History of Britain, The Story of the Jews, Civilization.

“A deeply committed act of witnessing by a writer of extraordinary vision.  This unique chronicle harnesses the power of ancient myth with haunting emotions of biblical imagery.  A century ago, Smyrna was the very site of hell on earth, and Homero Aridjis tells the story of his father’s journey through a nightmarish labyrinth of carnage and despair.   The reader emerges with feelings of outrage and deep gratitude for this unforgettable account.” Atom Egoyan, Armenian-Canadian film director and screenwriter of such breakthrough films as The Sweet Hereafter (1997), Ararat (2002), Remember (2015) and Guest of Honor (2019)

“Smyrna in Flames is a timely testament and addition to the canon of narratives on the Smyrna Catastrophe of 1922 committed by the Ottoman Empire against the Greek and Armenian population inside the ancient and fabled city of Smyrna. It is also a survival odyssey in Homero Aridjis’ family history during the Armenian and Greek Genocides and a testament to the human potential for resilience that is captured on the page with atmosphere and urgency.” Eric Nazarian, Armenian-American film director and screenwriter of such films as The Blue Hour (2007), Die Like a Man (2021) Do Not Forget Me, Istanbul (2011), and Aurora (2018)

“Passionate, brave, and deeply felt, Homero Aridjis’s novel is a powerful read. Told through the eyes of his father, this is the compelling narrative of a young person confronting History with a capital ‘H’ — the intimate account of a human catastrophe whose devastating repercussions are still being felt in the Aegean area today, a century later.” Ersi Sotiropoulos, author of Zigzag through the Bitter Orange Trees (2013 winner, Greek State Prize for Literature and the Book Critics’ Award) and  What’s Left of the Night (2018, winner, 2019 National Translation Award.

“2022 will mark the centenary of the burning of Smyrna. Of those who have written about the catastrophe, Homero Aridjis has added the latest testament, faithful both to history and to the memory of his father.” Jeffrey Eugenides, American fiction writer of renown work, among them, Virgin Suicides (1993), Middlesex (2003), The Marriage Plot (2011) and Fresh Complaint (2017)