THE MAZE

First-novelist Karnezis (stories: Little Infamies, Feb. 2003) works out a nice improvisation on the classic Homeric themes of exile and cunning—here, as played out in the aftermath of the disastrous 1922 Anatolian war.

Brigadier Nestor, a has-been officer addicted to morphine and still grieving over the death of his wife a year before, is stranded in Turkey with a squadron of Greek soldiers. They have lost the war and may soon end up prisoners—or victims—of the Turks unless Nestor finds a way to get them home. Order is breaking down: theft is rampant (even Nestor’s cigars have been pinched), food is short (the men are living on nothing but cornmeal), corruption is endemic (the chaplain has to bribe the cook for communion wafers), and there are signs of mutiny brewing (Communist leaflets appear mysteriously in the barracks day after day). One of the men deserts, and soon after a prize stallion breaks loose and bolts from the corral. In pursuit of the horse, the troops discover an almost deserted Greek village and proceed to set up camp there in relative safety. They also capture the deserter and uncover the Communist agitator. It looks as though Nestor is on the way to restoring order in the ranks until the chaplain, under pressure from a local prostitute he has set out to redeem, intervenes and attempts to stop the executions. Under ordinary circumstances Nestor would hear out the good father’s pleas and carry on, but this time the chaplain has two strong cards to play: a massacre of Turkish prisoners that Nestor authorized some time back, and a luckless foreign correspondent stranded in the village who hasn’t filed a story in months. The fortunes of war, it seems, can shift as quickly as the sands of the Anatolian desert.

A splendidly realized account of fate and circumstance, richly narrated with a good ear for the music of history and character alike.