Greek Passion / Nikos Kazantzakis 432 p.

I am a Kazantzakis junkie.  This author of Zorba the Greek and The Last Temptation of Christ wrote a novelization of the life of Francis of Assisi - Saint Francis: a Novel - which is one of my all-time favorites.  Greek Passion was less enjoyable but still interesting, a reworking of the Gospel Passion in a small Greek village controlled by the Turks during the Ottoman period.  I liked it for its extremely vivid depiction of the setting; on the other hand, the development of the characters to represent various Gospel figures felt sometimes forced and cookie-cutterish.  I did like the Pilate figure, the Turkish governor, fat, drunken and debauched, with no more concern for his subjects than animals but powerfully motivated to keep the peace.

An Ode to Salonika: the Ladino Verses of Bouena Sarfatty / Renee Levine Melammed 308 pp.

This was a pleasant surprise.  I'll share a definition of Ladino, only because I didn't know what it was before I read this title: a nearly extinct Romance language with elements borrowed from Hebrew that is spoken by Sephardic Jews esp. in the Balkans, Turkey, and the Near East. (Webster's)  Sarfatty grew up in the Sephardic community in Salonika, whose roots are traced back to Spain at the time of the expulsion of the Jews in the 15th century.  She was imprisoned during WWII, escaped, and worked as a partisan to free others.  During and after the war she chronicled the history of her community by writing approximately 500 coplas, a form of Ladino poetry.  The book contains chapters of explication, in which Melammed provides both Sarfatty's personal history and the history of her community.  Then we get to see the complete collection of her coplas, both in Ladino and translated into English.  As Melammed points out, Sarfatty's coplas would not be considered high art, but they provide an amazing amount of information in an intimate and immediate way.  Really fascinating.

The Sandcastle Girls

The Sandcastle Girls by Chris Bohjalian  320 pp.

"How do a million and a half people die with nobody knowing? -- You kill them in the middle of nowhere." So says the narrator of this story about the Armenian genocide. I know I learned nothing about it when in school. In 1915 the Ottoman Empire began the systematic elimination of the Armenian people, some killed outright, others marched into the desert to die of thirst and starvation. This novel chronicles the events in the lives an American aide worker, Elizabeth Endicott, and an Armenian engineer named Armen Petrosian during that time period. That story alternates with that of novelist Laura Petrosian, the granddaughter of Elizabeth and Armen as she researches her grandparents' story through diaries, letters, and photographs as well as the secret her mother kept until her death. This is a riveting story which, while fiction, may help to spark more recognition of the horrific events of the early 20th century. Bohjalian is a very talented writer.

I knew nothing about the Armenian genocide until a high school friend told me about his Armenian grandmother being smuggled out of Turkey in a hay wagon as a child to escape the Turks. She was a sweet little lady who spoke no English but still attended all the school events her grandchildren were in and especially delighted in the musicals her grandson often starred in. I'll never forget Grandma Haroian.