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Nikos Bakolas: Η Μεγάλη Πλατεία (Crossroads)

The title of this novel in Greek translates literally as The Great Square. As the novel is set primarily in Bakolas’ home town of Thessaloniki/Salonica I am assuming that the city is seen as a crossroads.

The book focuses on the stories of four residents of Thessaloniki. Fotis is a lover of the sea and becomes a sailor though we first meet him as he is caught in a storm in the English Channel, which does not turn out well for him. Christos is a not very successful journalist. Angela has like others fled from Western Anatolia in 1922. Her parents were killed en route and she was raped on the ship which she managed to flee on from Smyrna.Finally there is Yannis whose best friend is murdered – suspicion falls partially on him – so he he flees to Thessaloniki where he encounters Angela.We follow these four andithe various people they associate with. While Fotis travels, the others stay mainly in Thessaloniki.

Bakolas alternates between the four though in some cases their paths cross, as we follow their lives in the late 1920s and 1930s when Greece is in considerable political turmoil and the political background will affect them to varying degrees. Bakolas also jumps backwards and forwards in time. For example, for no obvious reason he reports on the death of one of the characters, well before her death in the chronology.

Inevitably they all struggle in their own way. Fotis marries a Jewish woman which does not go down well with with his family nor hers, particularly when she takes on a Christian name. The marriage is not succesful and he is often absent. On one of his voyages he jumps ship and is reported dead, though we know that he has swum to the shore. He ends up in Beirut where he settles down with a local woman, Eleni, before subsequently returning toThessaloniki.

Christos struggles with his journalism, having started right at the bottom. He is not entrusted with the crime stories and is sent off to review a singing contest where he meets and subsequently marries Amalia and they have children. He is in constant disagreement with his boss. It all gets really bad when he inadvertently comes across what iwill be the Campbell pogrom. He wants to report the truth but his editors want to cover it up. He leaves the paper )which will later fold and works in the market before getting a job at another paper, where he again discovers journalism is not about reporting the truth but following a political line.Indeed, the paper has in-house censors and Christos’ house is searched by the security police.

Angela, on her own, struggles but is taken in by an elderly man Eugenios. All he wanted was for them to fall asleep in each other’s arms under the bedclothes – nothing else. Yannis, who comes from a well-to-do family but leaves them when his friend is murdered and he is suspected, is interested in Angela and they become closer, particularly after Eugenios dies. But to make it complicated, she will later have another male companion called Yannis. He is called the other Yannis and will try but fails to commit suicide.
As mentioned all of this action takes place during the 1920s/1930s but we will move on to the the late 1930s/1940s with some change of characters but, more importantly the German occupation and the postwar civil war.

Yannis and Angela have been an on-again, off-again relationship but Yannis finally proposes to her. His life has changed as his sister emigrates to Austria . Fotis sets out on what is allegedly his final voyage. We are told this. Hs family are not. He has had a son by Marika – somewhat confusingly called Angel – and Angel has been brought up by Fotis’ mother, Myrsine. With an almost permanently absent father and a mother he meets just once, when she turns up shortly before the war for a brief visit,. He becomes somewhat wild In one of the not infrequent merging of the stories, he will become close to Antigone, Christos’ daughter.

The German occupation is as horrific as we might ecpect. We – and the characters – see people shot in the streets and the bodies left for all to see. People are arrested. The Jews are rounded up and led away. As with the Campbell pogrom, Christos, no longer a journalist, shows more sympathy than most. Some Greeks, of course, collaborate and most struggle financially, though the black market thrives, as does looting of houses when the occupants – Jews and others are arrested – Christos takes his son to his parents in a village, where it is safer but he is nearly arrested.

The war with the Germans ends but the civil war starts.Christos helps the left-wing groups the set up a clandestine newspaper. However the civil war seems almost as bad as the German occupation, not least because the Greeks are very much divided between the left and the royalists. Some of our main characters are involved including, in particular, Angel who is arrested. When he is released strange characters are seen hanging round his house and he deems it wise to flee, accompanied by his current girlfriend Alcmene, Christos’ daughter. It does not go well. Indeed the only person who seems to be doing well, as his textile factory is very successful, is Yannis. However Fotis to our surprise and the surprise of his family arrives on a British ship.

This is something of a chaotic book and it is often tricky keeping track of who is doing what, not least because Bakolas often simply uses he and she without it always being clear to whom he is referring. I have mentioned the main characters but there are quite a few others.

On the plus side he does give an excellent story of what is going on in Thessaloniki and, by extension, Greece over an important twenty year period with all of its chaos, the very mixed fortunes of the various characters, umpteen stories of a multitude of characters, some sad, many complicated, many both sad and complicated.

Publishing history

First published in 1987 by Kedros
First English translation in 1997 by Kedros
Translated by Caroline Harbouri