1917

In the book’s chronology, 1917 is the year Dimitri Komninos is born as a fire devastates Thessaloniki. The paired events make the year an opening point for the intertwined stories of a family and a city whose diverse life will be increasingly divided by war, fear, and persecution.

A Year of Birth and Destruction

Dimitri’s birth coincides with the fire that devastates Thessaloniki, described as a thriving Greek city where Christians, Jews, and Muslims live side by side. The year therefore holds two sharply contrasting beginnings: a child enters the story as the city around him suffers a catastrophe.

Place in the Wider Chronology

The narrative moves forward five years from 1917 to the destruction of Katerina Sarafoglou’s home in Asia Minor by the Turkish army. Separated from her mother in the chaos, Katerina flees across the sea to an unknown destination in Greece. This later rupture establishes the broader chronology of displacement and loss around the lives that will become entangled with Dimitri’s and with Thessaloniki’s history.

Narrative Significance

Rather than functioning as a bare date, 1917 binds personal and civic histories at the outset: Dimitri’s arrival and the city’s devastation occur together. The synopsis places this beginning within a longer movement toward division, as war, fear, and persecution come to separate people who had lived alongside one another.