War and geopolitical conflicts frequently reduce human communities to statistics, borders, and abandoned ruins. When military conflicts force populations from their homes, personal memories, shared heritage and everyday lives risk fading into obscurity. Without deliberate efforts to preserve the human dimension of displacement, history can become detached from the people who lived it.
Award-winning author Vivian Avraamidou Ploumbis brings that human dimension to the foreground in Haunting Voices: The Mediterranean Jewel Speaks. Born in Famagusta, Cyprus, and displaced at the age of sixteen during the events of 1974, she returned almost half a century later to encounter her city again — this time as a visitor. Photographs of the abandoned Varosha became the starting point for seventy-three short stories, each giving literary form to a memory, a thought, a question or an imagined voice awakened by what she saw. In this interview, Avraamidou Ploumbis reflects on memory and displacement, the power of nationalism, the need to see the individual behind collective identities, and literature’s ability to illuminate history through human experience.
Q: You were born in Famagusta and spent your early life there before the 1974 invasion forced your family into displacement. How did your personal memories of the city shape the stories in Haunting Voices: The Mediterranean Jewel Speaks?
Vivian Avraamidou Ploumbis: I was sixteen when we left Famagusta, and those sixteen years were enough—not because they were many, but because of the particular history we lived through during that time. I was old enough to remember the city in great detail, but also to remember how we understood what was happening around us: the tensions between the two communities, as well as those within our own. Those years inevitably shaped the way I came to see things.
What struck me when I saw the city again was not its physical condition; after so many decades, we could imagine what we would find. The shock was something deeper. I felt that I was looking at the physical imprint of what nationalism can do. It was no longer an idea, an argument, or a chapter of history. It was there in front of me, embodied in an entire city that had been left without its people for almost half a century.
Each photograph then became a trigger: sometimes for a very specific memory, sometimes for a thought, an association or a question. From there, imagination took over and transformed what the photograph had awakened in me into a literary text.
Q: Haunting Voices delivers a sharp warning about the dangers of extreme nationalism and discrimination. What parallels do you see between the division of Cyprus and the geopolitical divides shaking the world today?
Vivian Avraamidou Ploumbis: At the geopolitical level, every conflict is different. It has its own history, its own interests, its own alliances and its own responsibilities. I would be very cautious about drawing easy parallels between Cyprus and the conflicts we see around the world today. But if you move away from states and borders and look instead at the human being, the similarities become much harder to ignore.
People are not born knowing whom they are supposed to fear or hate. These divisions are cultivated. They are fed by narratives, by interests, by political purposes, until eventually they enter people’s lives and become part of the way they see one another. And when that process succeeds, the consequences at the human level become painfully familiar: fear, loss, displacement, destroyed relationships, homes that can no longer be returned to.
Perhaps that is why Haunting Voices carries such a strong warning about nationalism. My own experience has made it impossible for me to remain silent about it. We cannot rewrite the history that has already been written. But wherever we may find ourselves on the geopolitical map, it is up to us to shape the future.
Q: The book comprises seventy-three short stories rather than a single continuous novel. Why did you choose this mosaic structure to capture the devastation and spirit of Famagusta?
Vivian Avraamidou Ploumbis: The structure was not a conscious choice. I did not set out to write seventy-three stories or to create a mosaic. It was almost as if I could hear voices coming from my city — haunting voices. Each photograph had its own voice, its own cry. They may all have come from the same pain and the same need to be heard, but each one spoke to me differently and demanded its own story.
For me, those photographs were like seventy-three slaps in the face. Each one reminded me of the shame we should feel, as human beings, for what we are capable of doing to one another. In fact, the original Greek title of the collection was Tis Dropis — Of Shame. Shame for the occupation, shame for the betrayal that preceded it, but also shame that, after all these years, the problem remains unresolved and the wounds remain open.
So writing a separate story for each photograph was not really a decision about literary form. It was my way of answering each of those voices.
Q: In your work, you make a conscious effort to explore human perspectives from both sides of the divide, including imagining the humanity of soldiers and opposing communities. What role does empathy play in breaking cycles of conflict?
Vivian Avraamidou Ploumbis: I believe that one of the ways to break the hold of nationalist thinking is to stop seeing people only as groups and begin seeing the individual again. Empathy does not mean denying history, responsibility or what has been done. It means refusing to believe that a collective label tells us everything there is to know about a human being.
There is an image I often use when I speak about this. Inside my grandfather’s looted office in Famagusta, a Turkish soldier had written on the wall: “If it is a sin, I deserve punishment.” I know nothing about that soldier beyond those words. But those words are enough to make me stop and see an individual — someone capable, at that moment, of questioning what was happening and his own place within it.
For me, that is where empathy begins. And perhaps that is also where the power of nationalism begins to weaken: when “the other” stops being a category and becomes a person.
Q: Much of your historical fiction starts from real artifacts like photographs, lost documents, and forgotten moments. How do you balance rigorous factual history with creative storytelling when writing about sensitive national trauma?
Vivian Avraamidou Ploumbis: I don't consciously think of it as a balance between fact and imagination. I am not trying to change history, and certainly not to make it more palatable. What I am trying to do is understand.
I want to understand why people behave as they do in particular circumstances: what influences them, what they fear, what they desire, how they respond to the pressures around them, and why conflicts arise between them. Historical facts can tell us what happened, but literature allows us to enter the human experience of what happened.
The Professor of Comparative Literature Dimitris Kargiotis once described my fiction as transforming historical material into literature by illuminating history through “the subjective dimension of human experience.” I think that comes very close to what I do, although I do it instinctively rather than according to a conscious method. I begin with the history, but my real question is always the human one: what does this history do to the people who have to live through it?
Q: As the generation that experienced the 1974 division ages, what message do you hope younger readers and future generations take away from Haunting Voices?
Vivian Avraamidou Ploumbis: I am not sure I want readers to take away a particular message. I would rather leave them with questions. I want them to think.
For younger Cypriots, and for the generations that will eventually be called upon to shape the future of the island, I hope the book can make them question some of the certainties and identities they inherit from us. But I want exactly the same thing for readers far beyond Cyprus. That is why it matters to me that the book is translated into other languages and that I have the opportunity to present it to audiences in different parts of the world. Famagusta is a very particular place with a very particular history, but what happened there raises questions that are not only Cypriot.
The Lebanese writer Amin Maalouf wrote about what he called “murderous identities” — identities that can become so absolute that they turn other human beings into enemies. If Haunting Voices can make a reader, young or old, pause for a moment and question the identities, certainties and divisions we inherit, then, for me, it has done enough.
Literature plays an essential role in preserving collective memory when historical events threaten to erase the human dimension of conflict. Through Haunting Voices: The Mediterranean Jewel Speaks, Vivian Avraamidou Ploumbis transforms regional trauma into a universal lesson on empathy, loss, and the devastating cost of extreme nationalism. Her work demonstrates that real peace begins when communities listen to the quiet, personal stories behind the political borders.
As modern societies grapple with rising polarization and territorial disputes, stories that center on our shared humanity become vital instruments for reconciliation. Avraamidou Ploumbis reminds us that while cities can be occupied and buildings can fall into ruin, the spirit and heritage of a community endure through honest, courageous literature.
Get a copy at https://www.amazon.com/Haunting-Voices-Mediterranean-Jewel-Speaks/dp/B0CTPGBGWJ