ABSTRACT

This chapter presents a particular case of a general condition that affects Greco-Turkish relations to this day: the enduring hold of quite divergent narratives concerning events which constitute the cardinal moment of both nations 20th-century history and in which their fates were conjoined. Consistently with the names given to the war and the ensuing exchange of populations literature inspired by them has come to be known as The Literature of the Asia Minor Disaster and as The Literature of Independence in Greece and Turkey respectively. The Greek case differs in that the early exponents of what came to be recognised as the literature of the Asia Minor Disaster were themselves direct victims of the war rather than just participants and observers as in the Turkish case. Yaban is an altogether more complex work. It was first published in 1932 in Istanbul and has remained in print ever since.