The cruelty humans are keen to inflict to each other for reasons pertaining to religious, cultural or historical reasons, or all at once plus racism is never ending. The more I delve into the world history, the more I see how no nation or group seems to be safe from the mortal sin of hating the other, for reasons that have less to do with the human nature, but more with inherited traits that no one can really avoid or change overnight.

Children of War by Ahmet Youlmaz, translated by Paula Darwish is the first-person story of Hassanakis, a former resident of Creta where his family settled for 15 generations. As a consequence of the 1923 Treaty of Lausanne who allowed the deportation of 1.8 Million Turks to mainland Turkey, plus a love affair with a Greek-Christian woman, he is forced to start a new life. Originally written in Turkish, it was inspired by three notebooks left by a Cretan refugee who died in Ayvalik, Turkey in 1948. The author familiar was no strager to his parents were Cretan deportees themselves.

It is a slow paced, evocative story, with a fast forward timeline and many observations about the human psychology, particularly when it comes to the neighbours who are suddenly becoming enemies or the people who never met before deciding to take accountable for all their shortcomings the members of a different cultural group. The Balkans, the Middle East, Europe during WWII has plenty of such stories to tell. Sad stories about the volatility of human fate and relationships.

For the Cretan Turks, a new trauma was waiting as they arrived in the homeland they never been before: many did not speak the language and they were unwelcomed anyway. In a limbo between countries and cultures, they remained nostalgic about the life as it once been, the graves of their parents left in a country where they most probably not come back.

The book includes many historical references and notes which are helpful for acknowledging the historical context and the political evolutions. Therefore, the book is both informative and relevant as a story in itself set in a dramatic historical time.

Although I was deeply delved into the story, my honest explanation is because of the novelty of the topic for me, as well as the recognition of elements that I was familiar with from other contexts. Those details put aside, I´ve found the story relatively simple and more focused on the events than on a coherent plot or the encounters between the characters. It follows a relatively simple line and it is nothing wrong with it. Only that I am that kind of multi-tasking reader that wants sparkles of intellectual excitement on every page. That´s one of the reasons I usually avoid historical fiction, because it is rarely enough.

Children of War - the name of a taverna - is nevertheless an important reading in a syllabus of historical and cultural references, dislocation and identity trauma. Unfortunately, the list is growing bigger and bigger every day.

This is a sad and poignant tale, as well as a sometimes horrific one, about a period in history about which I knew very little – the enmity between Greek Christians and Turkish Muslims on the island of Crete. For generations the two communities lived beside each other amicably and peacefully. Then politics took over and the Turkish Muslims were persecuted and forced to flee back to their “homeland”, even though Crete had been that homeland for so many years. The novel focusses on young Hassanakis, a child when the book opens, and whom we follow through the trials and tribulations his family have to go through before they can reach safety. It’s quite a story, but I didn’t think the writing lived up to the subject. I never felt that I was inside the characters’ heads as we are told too much rather than shown and none of them came fully alive for me, not even Hassanakis himself, whose voice we hear. The book ended very abruptly, and I assume there is going to be a sequel but even so such a sudden ending leaves the reader a little disconcerted. All in all, an interesting novel but not a very literary one.

I loved the first sentence and it immediately drew me in. We are following a young Muslim boy of Turkish descent growing up on Crete during WWI - and he is going by a nickname that he does not know how he got it. Intriguing!
I picked this book because I know very little about this part of history and I was intrigued to learn about it. I enjoy learning about history through personal stories and accounts, but I am not only here to read about a boy growing up. I do want to learn. Sadly this book left me wanting more in the latter part. There is a 2 page overview of important events in the beginning of the book and I felt like this gave me more about the history of this time and area than the whole rest of the book.
Adding to that, the main character grew more and more unlikeable so that I had a really hard time to continue following him. Such a great setting, such a great premise, but sadly not fulfilled to the potential that I would have hoped for.

I'll be honest-- it wasn't my absolute favorite. The characters were pretty 2-dimensional and I didn't like any of them. I thought that the story had a lot of potential but the plot wasn't developed and everything could have gone a little bit deeper. I didn't know much about the events in the time period so I did learn a bit from that, but I also don't think I got more out of the book than that.

This novel, is set in Crete(Greece) during the period from the late nineteenth century to the years following the First World War. It is set against a background of real historical events and is based on three notebooks left by a Cretan refugee who died in Ayvalık in Turkey in 1948. The Treaty of Lausanne in 1923 lead to the mass deportation of an estimated 1.8 million people. Most had little or no connection with the country they were sent to and many did not speak the language at all.

A book written in first person format about a boy called Hassan who was born in a peaceful small village in Crete (a Greek island) in the times of the Ottoman Empire where the island later broke into a civil war.

Another beautiful heart wrenching book that will often leave you in tears, it certainly had me bawling my eyes out. I loved the writing style of the author, they would first talk about some incident in the main protagonist's life and then later unwind the story of who the person they are talking about are and how they met them.

Books like these are something we all should read atleast once in our lifetime. We all should be aware of the effects of controversial speeches and emotions of the privileged that more than often leaves the common folk's lives in shackles. Eventually it's them who suffer the most and this book does a phenomenal job at highlighting such factors.

It's under these circumstances do we truly know where our morals lie, if our friends are truly ours or our love for power overpowers our human decency of respecting someone's life, or even, sparing it to say so.

There were two things that took me by surprise, one of them actually disappointed me a lot and that was calling Palestine as Israel and the other was the lifestyle of the Cretan Turks who were mUsLiMs casually engaging themselves in activities that are strictly prohibited in Islam. I did not know what I expected but I surely was taken a back given how much the book revolved around those things at times.

3.7/5🌟

I read this, but didn't fully engage with it. The reading felt passive as the writing style and author's voice did not hook me.

2.5☆

As much as I loved the historical elements of the book, them covering a very interesting part of the modern Turkey history, the story felt a bit flat. Every fortune and misfortune happening in Hassan's life was recounted abruptly, which didn't give an opportunity to connect to the story.

This book could not be more poignant than now when we witness so much movement of global citizens and so much racism and prejudice towards them. In this book we read about the forced movement of Muslims from Crete, forced out by Christian unrest at the end of World War I. Residents of Crete for many generations were forced to flee and faced huge changes along the way as they made their home in Turkey as part of the Greek/Turkish people exchange. This was a sad story when I consider the facts of the situation and the tremendous upheaval the citizens involved underwent but I found it difficult to feel sympathy for Hassanakis. His character didn't draw me in, nor did he pull on my heart strings as I think his situation should have done. It was an interesting read though and taught me much about a period of history I knew nothing about.

A well written account of an unfamiliar time in history. Crete, an large Greek island close to the Turkish mainland has been a place of refuge for Turkish migrants for many centuries, and for some, their homeland as they have never lived anywhere else. Cretans and Turks had lived alongside each other respecting each others customs and religious beliefs. We relive the ethnic cleansing of these migrants through a young Muslim boy Hassanakis, whose Turkish family have lived on Crete for fifteen generations. We join them in the aftermath of WW1 when powerful countries are deciding the future of Greece and the fading Ottoman empire, the Treaty of Lausanne in 1923 renegotiated the borders of the Turkish Republic. They are continually on the move to escape harm yet meet friendly Greeks and Turks who support them along their journey. Hassanakis forms a bond with a Greek employer, falls in love and creates a life for himself despite the circumstances. A interesting read.

Thanks to Netgalley, the author and Neem Tree Press publishers for an ARC in return for an honest review

i really enjoyed reading this book, I liked that it wasn't a typical memoir. The story was enjoyable and I was glad to go on this journey with them.

I wanted to really love this book. I found the premise to be so very interesting. The beginning was very fact heavy, but interesting. I had to keep re-reading the first chapter to understand what was going on. This novel has so much information to process. It was hard to connect to the characters. I'm proud that we have this novel about the events that take place. I know a lot of work went into the writing of this book.

A war fought for either selfish or any altruistic reason, is detrimental to mankind. The perils of any war is not only horrendous but changes the course of life and history, lacerating them in numerous ways for generations. When you are taking in the enormity of a major moment in history, it is easy to forget that behind the epic events lie a multiplicity of individual stories. This book portrays the exact sentiments on how war-laden displacement can influence the working of human life. Ahmet Yorulmaz’s “Children of War” in English with a translation by Paula Darwish, is the story of Hassanakis, a young Muslim boy of Turkish descent growing up on Crete during WWI.
1919. The invasion of the Greek tropes. As Muslim Cretans were increasingly viewed as a threat to Greek unity, it resulted in the forced migration of Cretan Muslims from Greece to Turkey. Thus, Hassanaki is forced to flee Crete, and he emigrates to Ayvalik, Turkey, a coastal city located right across the Island of Lesvos, in 1923. Against the backdrop of such a terrible wholesale movement of people, which upended countless centuries of ownership and connection to the land, it is all too easy to find yourself swamped by the sheer enormity and horror of the events at hand. The story contained within this book captured one of the most overlooked aspects of the cruel war – the deliquescing of identity & nationhood, and the repercussions of the population exchange that occurred. Brutal and captivating, Yorulmaz is a talented writer, skilled in conveying a complex, long conflict succinctly while remaining even-handed in tallying the atrocities inflicted on the lives of people brandished by the war. It is through this propensity that the writer can humanise the statistics of forced migration, 1.6 million displaced. The virtue of great political fiction is that even if people feel far removed from certain events, a great writer will bring to life the human stories that will gage the interest of the reader and encourage awareness. I, for one, found myself researching Greco-Turkish war after reading this novel to increase my understanding.

This novel sheds light on an historical issue that I was mostly unaware of before reading this: the fight for Crete between Turkey and Greece, and what that meant for the people there, torn and living between two cultures, languages, religions, opposing forces. It is said quite nicely here towards the end, when someone points out that all the treaties and wars and population exchanges are for the big guys on top, the leader and politicians, and none of them truly care about the little people actually living in these places, and what the big decisions mean for them.

It was quite interesting to read about this Turkish Muslim first fleeing his village with his family, then living in a culturally mixed city, having to learn Greek, but also the Quran, working and loving Greek people, but not being fully accepted by them, and also looked down at for this by his own community. It was a multi-faceted issue. However, I found that it sadly cut off too short: right as the population exchange was happening and he was traveling to Turkey to live there, his "motherland" that he had never been to before, having to assimilate back into a purely Turkish community after having lived in the mixed world that is Crete, the book is over. That seemed like a weird choice. Also, in terms of narration, this is labeled as both historical fiction and memoir, though it leans a little more towards the non-fiction in my opinion. Not a lot of plot arcs and character development and the like - which is not bad, though maybe expectations need to be adjusted.

This is a beautiful, haunting story, based on notebooks left by a Cretan refugee after the population exchange with Turkey. It is told in a slow and deliberate manner, building a picture of the cultures and politics that shaped one man's life.

Hassanakis is a Muslim boy who is forced to first leave his village and then later his island, after his family has been there for generations. "So what if about fifteen generations of my family lived there? In the end, the Greeks cried 'Turks out!'"

Children of War offers great insight to a time and place that is not that well known in the West. I felt the very weight of history, the sense of confusion and loss throughout this novel that I felt when visiting Kayaköy, a Turkish city abandoned as a result of that population exchange.

Paula Darwish brings this important voice to life, and I am grateful to the publisher for this advance review copy.

Thanks to the publisher and Netgalley for providing this e-copy in exchange for an honest review.

This was a book about a subject that I didn't know anything about. This is a bit of an information dump on the Greek Christians and Turkish Muslims and the long sad history of it all. The story of Hassan and his family is one that is full of trials and tribulations relating to the themes of religion, refugees, belonging, and love.

The themes seem more important than the quality of the characters. I understand that this might be the intention, but it left me a bit wanting.

Thanks to the publisher and Netgalley for providing this e-copy in exchange for an honest review.

This is a dense read which is to be expected as the topic it covers isn't one of rainbows and fluffy animals. There are moments of such pure, raw pain that make you feel so deeply for Hassan and his family. It's tense and scary at times but always, always gripping.

It starts off very slowly and gives you a lot of information all at once, information that I was not at all familiar with, but I found myself compelled by the idea of it. It highlights ethnic and religious stigmatization (the Greek Christians against the Turkish Muslims and vice versa) in a struggle to claim one's belonging.

This isn't my next great love, but it will stand out in my memory for a significant amount of time.

Children of War by Ahmet Yorulmaz is a short novel that packs a punch. It's a work of historical fiction that covers a time and place of which I was less familiar. It's a tale of war and ethnic prejudices on the island of Crete at the end of WWI. It's a story of forced migration for protagonist Hassan and his family.

I wanted to love this book, and the content is intriguing. However, there's something missing, which could be based on the translation, that kept the characters from fully coming to life. Still, I appreciated the unique perspective the book offered.

Many thanks to NetGalley and the publisher for providing me with a copy of this book. All thoughts are my own.

Children of War by Ahmet Yorulmaz is an interesting memoir of the forced evacuation of Kiri Hassanaki and his family (all Turkish muslims) from the island of Crete. Due to the Treaty of Lausanne, signed in 1923, it is estimated that 1.8 million people had to flee their homes for a country unknown to them.

It’s a short novel covering themes of exclusion due to religion, refugees, multi-cultural friendships and love.

Character development is quite shallow, but I think this was intentionally so as the themes are more important than the individual characters.

I enjoyed learning about this period in history and I did find it informative and interesting.

#netgalley #childrenofwar #ahmetyorulmaz #booksgosocial

This is a short book that follows Kiri Hassan, a Muslim Turk from the island of Crete, who is originally forced with his family in 1897 from their village, his life in Chania and his departure in 1923 during the population swap of Greeks in Turkey with Turks from Crete and Macedonia.
The events are interesting and not something I understood. However, the character of Hassan is quite wooden and the writing lacks depth. Events that could have been expanded are shallow, almost in the background as Hassan finds work, education, women and some financial independence.
A pity as the time period and location is ripe for a great historical novel.

“If you decide to cause trouble instead of getting along with people and living in peace, then you end up getting a beating. It’s the poor wretched people who end up bearing the brunt of the mistakes made by their ancestors and those in power!” _Kiri Vladimiros_
This book was really shocking, tragic and so real in an irritating way. It is about the story of Kiri Hassan a Muslim Turk from the island of Crete ( now part of Greece) and the tragic departure of about 1.8 million people from their homeland and to what so-called "motherland" due to the treaty of lausanne 1923.
In my opinion, this book is great. For the first time instead of seeing Muslims as terrorists, you will see them as victims. What I liked most was the writer's great descriptive way as you will feel that his words and phrases are graphic, the scenes are really vivid. My favourite character was the wise, big-hearted, great Kiri Vladimiros.