'Greece, 1917. The great city of Salonika is engulfed by fire as all of Europe is ravaged by war.
'Amid the destruction, there are those who have come to the frontlines to heal: surgeons, ambulance drivers, nurses, orderlies and other volunteers. Four of these people—Stella, Olive, Grace and Stanley—are at the centre of Gail Jones’s extraordinary new novel, which takes its inspiration from the wartime experiences of Australians Miles Franklin and Olive King, and British painters Grace Pailthorpe and Stanley Spencer. In Jones’s imagination these four lives intertwine and ramify, compelled by the desire to create something meaningful in the ruins of a broken world.
'Immersive and gripping, Salonika Burning illuminates not only the devastation of war but also the vast social upheaval of the times. It shows Gail Jones to be at the height of her powers.' (Publication summary)
'Painfully beautiful historical fiction from the mind of a celebrated writer.'
'Salonika Burning, the ninth novel from Gail Jones, is an enthralling narrative that transports readers to the battlefields of Greece in 1917. Jones, whose book The Death of Noah Glass won the Prime Minister’s Literary Award for Fiction in 2019, is one of Australia’s most distinguished and highly awarded writers. This latest novel, like much of her work, brings the settings and dramas of the past into sharp and vivid focus.' (Introduction)
'In 1917, at the height of World War I, a fire destroyed the Greek city of Salonika (Thessaloniki), a staging post for Allied troops. The centre of an ‘Ottoman polyglot culture’, Salonika was at the time home to large numbers of refugees, many of them Jewish and Roma. It was in one of the refugee hovels that the fire started, an ember from a makeshift stove igniting a bundle of straw. From that single ember grew an inferno that burned for thirty-two hours, obliterating three-quarters of the city and leaving 70,000 people – by some estimates half the population – homeless.' (Introduction)
'Salonika Burning, the ninth novel from Gail Jones, is an enthralling narrative that transports readers to the battlefields of Greece in 1917. Jones, whose book The Death of Noah Glass won the Prime Minister’s Literary Award for Fiction in 2019, is one of Australia’s most distinguished and highly awarded writers. This latest novel, like much of her work, brings the settings and dramas of the past into sharp and vivid focus.' (Introduction)
