West Coast Hellenic Book Club: Land of Aeolia by Ilias Venezis
West Coast Hellenic Book Club:
Land of Aeolia by Ilias Venezis
(Denise Harvey Publisher, 2020)
The conversation will be facilitated by Professor Sharon Gerstel, Director of the UCLA SNF Center for the Study of Hellenic Culture, and Dr. Eirini Kotsovili, Senior Lecturer in Global Humanities at Simon Fraser University.
This discussion will be held in Greek.
Saturday, November 7, 2026
10:00 A.M. Los Angeles / 8:00 P.M. Greece
Via Zoom
Click here to RSVP for this book club
Publisher’s description:
Land of Aeolia tells the story of the author’s childhood summers in Anatolia before World War I, before the Greek genocide, the Greco-Turkish war, the author’s captivity by the Turks, and before the exchange of populations between Greece and Turkey in 1922 that led to the permanent loss of his homeland. It is a testament to the power of literature to evoke that which is irrevocably lost.
In this story of his childhood, half fiction, half truth, Ilias Venezis describes and affirms a world in which the lives of humans, be they smugglers, saints, brigands, farmers, camel drivers or children, are reflected in nature – in her mountains, rivers, trees, eagles, bears, eels, and lizards, and all her manifestations – and therefore share an innate affinity with her mysterious world.
This program is made possible thanks to the Stavros Niarchos Foundation (SNF).
Click here to purchase this book directly from the publisher.