num_pages: 544
description: The history of a rarely written about, bewilderingly exotic five hundred years of clashing cultures and peoples, from the glories of Suleiman the Magnificent to its nadir under Nazi occupation. Salonica is the point where the wonders and horrors of the Orient and Europe have met over the centuries. Written with a Pepysian sense of the texture of daily life in the city through the ages, and with breathtakingly detailed historical research, Salonica will evoke the sights, smells, habits, songs and responses of a unique city and its inhabitants. The history of Salonica is one of forgotten alternatives and wrong choices, of identities assumed and discarded. For centuries Jews, Christians and Muslims have succeeded each other in ascendancy, each people intent on erasing the presence of their predecessors, and the result is a city of extraordinarily rich cultural traditions and memories of extreme violence and genocide, one that sits on the overlapping hinterlands of both Europe and the East. Mark Mazower has written a work of astonishing depth and originality about this remarkable city; magnificently researched and beautifully written, it is more than a book about a place; it studies in detail the way in which three great faiths and peoples have inhabited the same territory, and how smooth transitions and adaptations have been interwoven with violent endings and new beginnings.
language: English
title: Salonica, City of Ghosts : Christians, Muslims and Jews
titlecomplete: Salonica, City of Ghosts : Christians, Muslims and Jews
genres: Historical, History, Islam, Religion, Travel, Cities, Jewish, European History, Greece, Nonfiction
ratings_count: 1319
places: Thessaloniki
awards: awardedAt: 1072944000000
name: Duff Cooper Prize, awardedAt: 1072944000000
name: John D. Criticos Prize, awardedAt: 1104566400000
name: Hessell-Tiltman Prize, awardedAt: 1104566400000
name: Runciman Book Prize
publisher: Harper/Collins