Salonica, City of Ghosts

The history of a bewilderingly exotic city, rarely written about: 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 evokes 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.

‘A necessary masterpiece…a pleasure to read and curiously moreish.’ Louis de Bernieres, The Times ‘A tremendous book about a city unique not just in Europe, but in the entire history of humanity. Mazower…has done the old place proud…and has celebrated once and for all the mighty and fateful heritage of its citizens.’ Jan Morris, Guardian ‘[Mazower] sensitively analyses the internal debates and divisions which could be found within all the major communities.’ Sunday Telegraph ‘[Mazower] has produced a brilliant reconstruction of one of Europe’s great meeting places between the three monotheistic faiths.’ Economist ‘Mazower is a formidable historian…He has produced a majestic work: the biography of a city, complete with soul and ichor.’ Independent ‘Enthralling…brilliant…tragic, hopeful, beautifully written.’ Times Literary Supplement

Mark Mazower is the author of ‘Inside Hitler's Greece’ (Yale), ‘Dark Continent’ (Penguin Press) and ‘The Balkans’ (Weidenfeld). He is professor of history at Birkbeck College, University of London.