The Girls in the Sailor Suits

Eleni Dikaiou

Isbn:

978-960-378-811-9

Age Group:

10-12 years

Tabs

ABOUT

The story begins in Smyrna, Asia Minor, in 1915. Katinaki and Maritsa, twin little girls, and their Nene, driven by their grandfather’s old coachman, Kyr-Panayotis, are taking the air on the Smyrna Quai. The promenade is flooded with a harmonious mixture of colours and odours, sounds and words from many different languages, people from a variety of nations, Greeks, Turks, Italians, Armenians, Jews. There is nothing out of the ordinary in this Sunday promenade, but the little girls will remember every little detail for a long time afterwards.

REVIEW

This novel narrates the life of a middle-class family in Smyrna in the years preceding the Destruction in 1922, and follows their adventures as they become refugees in the bitter aftermath of that war. The third-person narration through the viewpoint of two girls from childhood to young adulthood offers an account of how a family experienced history.

The reader immediately identifies with the characters and gaining instant access to historical events, understands the individuals’ reactions to them. I believe this understanding is a crucial element of the novel which classifies it not as a historical novel but as a character study of psychological depth and as a social commentary on the recourses as well as the deadlocks of middle-class life.

The novel deals insightfully with themes such as the alienation between a couple once their social and economic status is shattered and the rough coming of age and compromise of children who see the values on which they grew up collapse. It poses a number of interesting questions: why do some people manage to bounce back from disaster and what is the price they must pay? Why do others give up? Who are the real winners in life, those who survive or those who withdraw?

Eleni Dikaiou offers only open answers to these questions. Her novel is ultimately a study on the human aspect of situations with which we are acquainted only through the official stiffness of historical analysis.

Manos Kontoleon, author and critic, Avgi tis Kyriakis, 20 October 1991

TRANSLATIONS

Que demain soit un jour de bonheur