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Book SynopsisWINNER OF THE DUFF COOPER PRIZE 2021
SHORTLISTED FOR THE RUNCIMAN AWARD 2022
A NEW STATESMAN AND TIMES LITERARY SUPPLEMENT BOOK OF THE YEAR 2021
''Deserves to remain the standard treatment of the subject in English for many decades to come'' Roderick Beaton, Times Literary Supplement
In the exhausted, repressive years that followed Napoleon''s defeat in 1815, there was one cause that came to galvanize countless individuals across Europe and the United States: freedom for Greece.
Mark Mazower''s wonderful new book recreates one of the most compelling, unlikely and significant events in the story of modern Europe. In the face of near impossible odds, the people of the villages, valleys and islands of Greece rose up against Sultan Mahmud II and took on the might of the imperial Ottoman armed forces, its Turkish cavalrymen, Albanian foot soldiers and the fearsome Egyptians. Despite the most terrible disasters, they hel
Trade Review
The Greek Revolution offers the best and fullest explanation, to date, for a series of events whose effects would change the entire geopolitics of Europe. Written with compassion and understanding for the human cost of that achievement, it deserves to remain the standard treatment of the subject in English for many decades to come. -- Roderick Beaton * Times Literary Supplement *
Exquisite detail, altogether impressive ... a cornucopia of revolution. -- Gerard DeGroot * The Times *
Compelling and disturbing, enriched by many new sources and excellent colour illustrations, and paying attention to the role of Ottomans and Albanians as well as Greeks, Mazower's book will become the standard account of this crucial revolution. -- Philip Mansel * The Spectator *
An engaging combination of fast-flowing narrative and insightful analysis. -- Tony Barber * Financial Times *
Encyclopaedic ... superbly subtle and thorough.
-- Julian Evans * Daily Telegraph *
With vivid detail, impeccable scholarship and great nuance, Mazower shows how the modern idea of the nation emerges out of the complex, sometimes random and often messy interactions between a plurality of agents ...
An illuminating account of both the unifying power of myths about the past, and the dangers inherent when such myths are connected to political reality. -- Lea Ypi * New Statesman *
As the subtitle of Mark Mazower's new book maintains, events in Greece 200 years ago helped shape modern Europe. His
elegant and rigorous account also holds lessons for modern geopolitics: about the galvanising effects of violence, the role of foreign intervention and the design flaws in dreams. * The Economist *
An epic narrative, both scholarly, breathlessly page-turning and packed with hauntingly romantic characters. Few historians dig so deep or with such sympathy into what history felt like to those living through it ... anyone in search of an opera plot should scour these drama-packed pages. -- Noonie Minogue * The Tablet *
Broad in scope and colorful in detail, this is a masterful portrait of a historic watershed. ... [A] sweeping history of Greece's 1821 war of independence against the Ottoman Empire. [Mazower] recounts the revolution's inception among Greek emigrés with an idealistic dream of Hellenic nationalism and its actuality as a murky, eight-year struggle fought mainly by peasants and warlords who were motivated less by patriotism than by religious hatred of Muslims, factional vendettas, and mercenary self-interest ...
A lucid, elegantly written, and often gripping account. * Publishers Weekly *
On the bicentennial of the Greek revolution, a prominent scholar tracks the historical detail and enormous international significance of the improbable, largely grassroots uprising against the Ottoman Empire. Mazower, a Columbia professor and winner of the Wolfson Prize for History who has written extensively about Greece and the Balkans, ably ties together the many disparate threads of this complex history of Greek independence. ...
An elucidating history that is relevant to understanding the geopolitics of Greece today. * Kirkus Reviews *
