The New Byzantines w/ Sean Mathews
Athens,
Greece 10680
Join Sean Mathews, author of The New Byzantines: The Rise of Greece and Return of the Near East, in conversation with author Michael Vatikiotis on how Greece’s Ottoman and Byzantine connections are reemerging amid turbulent times in the Eastern Mediterranean.
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.
Michael Vatikiotis is Senior Advisor at the Centre for Humanitarian Dialogue, where he works on conflict resolution and management across Asia and the Middle East. Before joining HD, he was editor of the Far Eastern Economic Review in Hong Kong. He is the author of “Blood and Silk: Power and Conflict in Modern Southeast Asia” and “Lives Between the Lines: A Journey in search of the Lost Levant” a history of his Greek and Italian family in the Middle East. He studied at the School of Oriental and African Studies in London and at Oxford University.