The New Byzantines: The Rise of Greece and Return of the Near East - Sean Mathews

A fresh portrait of Greece's forgotten Near Eastern identity, with old cultural, political and economic ties reforming in today's turbulent world.

‘Part travelogue, part geopolitical survey, this entertaining book looks at how the country's Near Eastern connections are being knitted back together.’ ― Peter Frankopan, Financial Times

‘A great read.’ ― Tim Judah, The Economist

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.

• Greece is a unique country to see the collapse of the post WWII order: it might be the last country in Europe where American power dies, not because it belongs to NATO, but because it belongs to the wider Middle East.
• Groundbreaking analysis of Israel’s overlooked alliance with Greece, which is reshaping the Mediterranean region, and of Turkish-aligned Greeks.
• An easy-to-read examination of the Middle East and Balkans made engaging through travel writing anecdotes that avoid academic jargon.