The New Byzantines w/ Sean Mathews

Join Sean Mathews, author of The New Byzantines: The Rise of Greece and Return of the Near East, for a special discussion on the island of Rhodes about the deep links Greece shares with the wider Middle East and Rhodes’ enduring cultural and historic place in the Levant.  He will be joined in conversation with Istanbul-based author Nektaria Anastasiadou and Tarik Tuten a seventh-generation custodian of the Hafız Ahmed Agha Library.

About the book

Caught between wars raging in both Eastern Europe and the Middle East, Greece is an island of relative stability. Popularly considered the cradle of Western civilisation, this is a Christian Orthodox state on the edge of the Islamic world. And, after a half-century of integration into NATO and the EU, Greece is now reabsorbing into the Near East, as the West fractures and new Middle Eastern powers rise. The country’s importance as a cultural and geopolitical hybrid is growing.

Travelling through the region, Sean Mathews explores at ground level the tectonic shifts reshaping Europe and the Middle East. He meets the last Greek merchants in Cairo, and hears from Istanbul’s remaining Greeks about Turkey’s break with the West. In Jerusalem, he discovers a budding alliance between Greece and Israel; and in a faded Ottoman port, he encounters football hooligans loyal to a Russian oligarch.

This bold reappraisal of Greece as a Near Eastern nation uncovers its Byzantine and Ottoman past as a key to survival in today’s chaotic, shrinking world.

About the speakers

Sean Mathews is a Greek-American journalist who has covered a wide swath of the Middle East. He is a correspondent with Middle East Eye, and has also written for The Economist and Al-Monitor, among others. He calls Athens home and travels often in the region. This is his first book.

Born in Istanbul, Tarik Tuten is a seventh-generation custodian of the Hafız Ahmed Agha Library in Rhodes, inaugurated in 1793. He is committed to advancing awareness of the library and securing its recognition as a vital component of Rhodian cultural heritage. His priority is the preservation of the library and its manuscript collection, alongside fostering meaningful access for scholars and all those interested in the history of Rhodes — including its Ottoman legacy and the wider traditions of manuscript culture.

Nektaria Anastasiadou is the author of three novels: A Recipe for Daphne (AUC Press, 2021), At the Foot of Eternal Spring (Papadopoulos, 2023), and Rotten Lemons, forthcoming from Stereoma Editions in May 2026. In 2023, she represented Turkey and Greece as a visiting fellow at the University of Iowa’s prestigious International Writing Program.