The Maze (Panos Karnezis)

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The Maze

Author: Panos Karnezis
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Publisher: Farrar, Straus and Giroux
In the summer of 1922, after a series of decisive defeats at the hands of the Turks, the Greek army is in retreat from Asia Minor. Thousands of soldiers sweep toward the Mediterranean coast, leaving behind their dead, their dreams of empire…and one lost brigade, wandering in the Anatolian desert under a seemingly inexpiable curse. As their leader slips further and further into morphine-dulled despair, with no hope of escape for his troops, morale crumbles among the officers. Communist leaflets appear mysteriously every morning in the camp. A rash of thefts goes unsolved. And each man’s thoughts turn, more and more often, to a single unspeakable act committed by the brigade in a moment of desperation.

At first the men’s luck seems to change when they stumble on a town-a Greek settlement untouched by the war, where the mayor and the schoolteacher are in fierce competition for the favors of the local courtesan, and a young, failed newspaper correspondent is drinking himself to death for lack of a story. But the brigade hasn’t outrun its Furies; instead it brings them to this homely idyll, with fateful consequences for soldiers and citizens alike.

The New York Times Book Review calls Panos Karnezis’s writing “spry and playful, sly and macabre,” observing that it “brings to mind the young Eudora Welty, especially in the fun it has with Greek legend and myth, [while its] intersection of gritty quotidian detail with flights of fancy recalls Gabriel García Márquez.” This first novel confirms Karnezis as one of Britain’s most remarkable young authors.

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Reviews

Amazon.com

Panos Karnezis’ The Maze is a moving and engaging novel of warmth and humour. Set in Anatolia in 1922, a Greek expedition, lost in the desert, bickers among itself and blunders forwards toward the coast. Brigadier Nestor is as addicted to morphia as he is to Greek myths; Father Simeon is as disappointed in himself as he is passionately sincere in his religion; and the Bolshevik Major Porfirio, who has failed in his attempt to win any men to his cause, save for his colonel, are each wonderful creations.

Lying in the recent memory of all these men is a massacre of Turkish civilians carried out by the brigade, which weighs on them heavily. Coming across a town the brigade settles in for a few days. Here Nestor can investigate fully the recent thefts that have plagued him and try to work out who is behind the communist propaganda circulating the camp. As readers we are given the opportunity to meet, among others, Mr Othon, the schoolmaster, the foolish Mayor and his fiancé, the town’s beautiful and exotic prostitute Madame Violetta, her maid Annina and her lover Yusuf the gardener.

Karnezis keeps the tone light throughout—one cannot help but be reminded of Captain Corelli’s Mandolin. Particularly at the beginning he overwrites: the sentences are too fussy and there are too many similes. But the book soon finds its true rhythm and while the story never offers quite enough substance, it is an enjoyable read and one that recommends Karnezis as a skilled writer. —Mark Thwaite

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