Maria Karavia has travelled widely in the Middle and Far East in her capacity as a newspaper reporter. She studied History of Art and has also worked in television and radio. During the dictatorship in Greece she lived in London, working for the Greek Service of the BBC World Service. In 1996 she and the director Giorgos Emirzas made the series Odessa: The Forgotten Homeland for the Greek State Television (ERT1).

Principal works:

Popular China: A Sort
of Smile (1978)
Hera: The Life and Work
of Hera Triantafyllidi (1985)
The Thinker of Maroussi:
Interviews with the Artist
Yannis Tsarouchis (1989)
Lunar Landscapes: Travels in the
Eastern Mediterranean (1990)
The Midnight Sun (1995)
Odessa - The Forgotten
Homeland (1999)
 
MARIA KARAVIA

ODESSA
THE FORGOTTEN HOMELAND

(200 pages, 30X23 cm., hard cover)
 

Maria Karavia gives a presentation of the history of Odessa and its residents based on rare archive material and photographs from private collections. Her narrative begins at this populous 19th century Black Sea port, when the Greek presence in the city was at its height. The Odessa Greeks were wealthy merchants and traders, some of whom had colossal fortunes. Great lovers of the arts and polyglots, they were true cosmopolitans and the city's 'aristocrats'. Through scenes depicting street life, people out on promenades down the coastal boulevards, the cafeterias, matchmaking, marriage negotiations between the upper-classes, the woods and the ships conveying wheat to the major European ports, emerges a vivid picture of the port, the city and its residents.