BOOKPATHS

Patmos Island, Greece

The Summer of My Greek Tavérna: a Memoir, by Tom Stone (New York: Simon and Schuster, 2002)

Tom Stone’s recollection of his initial excitement and eventual disillusionment operating The Beautiful Helen, a tavérna on the Greek Island of Patmos, is told with humor and style, while his love and knowledge of the island further enriches the pages.

In years past, my favorite time of day had always been late afternoon until sunset.  At four, people would begin leaving the beach, so by five, it was almost entirely deserted.  With the sun low in the sky behind the tavérna, the shadows of the tamarisk trees would lengthen across the beach, reaching out toward the sea, whose metallic-blue surface was gradually taking on the changing hues of the sky.  If there were clouds to reflect the rays of the setting sun, the effect was magical, particularly with the wind dropping as it usually did in the evening.  Then the surface of the sea would seem to float above itself on nearly imperceptible swells, iridescent with contrasting layers and swirls of turquoise, violet, and pink.  That there could be such beauty – and such stillness – was almost incomprehensible.

For those of us in the restaurant business, however, this period was incontestably the most anxiety-ridden of the day – the calm before the storm – in which you frantically raced against the clock to clear away the debris of lunch while simultaneously trying to prepare dinner. – from The Summer of My Greek Tavérna: a Memoir, by Tom Stone

Related Websites

Tom Stone’s Website

Publisher’s Website

Nikos Kazantzakis Museum, Myrtia, Crete, Greece

Housed in “a cluster of buildings in the central square,” the Nikos Kazantzakis (1883-1957) Museum, celebrates the author’s life and work.  Visitors will find “manuscripts and notes by the author; samples of his correspondence with major thinkers, politicians and authors of his time; first editions of his works in Greek and other languages; rare photographic material; souvenirs from his travels; personal effects; models, costumes and other material from theatre productions of his works in Greece and abroad; portraits and sculptures of the author; [and] dozens of foreign-language editions of his works from all over the world.”  The museum is open daily March - October, 9:00 a.m. to 7:00 p.m., and on Sundays November - February, 10:00 a.m. to 3:00 p.m.  Visit the Nikos Kazantzakis Museum website for additional information.

Santorini, Greece

Sarah Maslin Nir visits expatriate owned Atlantis Books “on the volcanic Greek Island of Santorini, in the cliff-top town of Oia.”

“The shop was born when its founders faced a quandary: What do you do when you have friends in scores of cities across the globe? It's a question that more and more of us are asking as the distances between communities shrink. If, like Craig Walzer and Chris Bloomfield, two 22-year-old world travellers, your far-flung friends are linked by a love of literature, you build them a temple - the bookshop - in the most beautiful place you can find, and wait for the pilgrims to come.” – from “Atlantis: Literary Heaven on Santorini,” by Sarah Maslin Nir, The Times

Greece

Helena Smith writes about “revered travel writer” Patrick Leigh Fermor – his reaction to receiving Greece’s highest honour, Commander of the Order of the Phoenix; learning to type for the first time at 92; and working on the last volume of his trilogy.

“In a rare public appearance, the revered travel writer Patrick Leigh Fermor has revealed that he is only now - aged 92 - learning to type, in order to finish the trilogy that has been at the centre of his writing life for more than 30 years.” – “Literary Legend Learning to Type at 92,” by Helena Smith, The Guardian

Bookpath: The Greek Islands

The Greek Islands, by Lawrence Durrell (first edition 1978; out of print, but available)

In The Greek Islands, Lawrence Durrell guides readers on an island-by-island tour, weaving together “evocative description, myth, architectural and archaeological details, and personal reminiscence.” By book’s end, readers will want to follow in Durrell’s footsteps to the “sun-drenched” islands he knew so well.

“The nagging question, ‘In what way does Greece differ from Italy and Spain?’ will answer itself. The light! One hears the word everywhere ‘To Phos’ and can recognize its pedigree – among other derivatives is our English word ‘phosphorescent’, which summons up at once the dancing magnesium flare quality of the sunlight blazing on a white wall; in the depths of the light there is blackness, but it is blackness which throbs with violet – a magnetic unwearying ultra-violet throb. This confers a sort of brilliant skin of white light on material objects, linking near and far, and bathing simple objects in a sort of celestial glow-worm hue.” – from The Greek Islands, by Lawrence Durrell

Corfu, Greece

Corfu will change the name of Boschetto Park, “alongside Corfu Town’s elegant esplanade,” to honor Lawrence and Gerald Durrell. A “big fiesta” this Sunday will include the unveiling of a plaque “honouring the two as ‘writers and philhellenes.’”

“’It is a step that is long overdue,’ said Spyros Georgas, a local physician who initiated the campaign. ‘The Durrells are a part of our life, a time that, unfortunately, has vanished. They made Corfu known and we should not forget them.’" – from “Corfu Pays Belated Tribute to Durrells,” by Helena Smith, The Guardian

Corfu, Greece

Located in the Ionian Sea, the Greek island of Corfu lies off the Albanian coast.

My Family and Other Animals, by Gerald Durrell (New York : Penguin, 2004; first published in 1956)

“So we sold the house and fled from the gloom of an English summer, like a flock of migrating swallows.” – from My Family and Other Animals, by Gerald Durell

In My Family and Other Animals, Gerald Durrell remembers 1935 to 1939, the five years of his childhood spent “on the sun-drenched, thyme-scented island of Corfu.” Natural history and family history interweave, inviting readers into time and place. My Family and Other Animals is a fine companion for a Corfu journey, whether in person or vicariously. His Corfu memoirs continue in Birds, Beasts and Relatives, and The Garden of the Gods.

“The mist lifted in quick, lithe ribbons, and before us lay the island, the mountains as though sleeping beneath a crumpled blanket of brown, the folds stained with the green of olive groves. Along the shore curved beaches as white as tusks among tottering cities of brilliant gold, red, and white rocks.” – from My Family and Other Animals, by Gerald Durrell

Cephalonia, Greece

Has researcher Robert Bittlestone “at last pinpointed the island to which Homer’s wanderer returned?” Travel with Fergus M. Bordewich to a “peninsula on the island of Cephalonia” that Bittlestone believes was “once a separate island – Ithaca,” in April’s Smithsonian Magazine.

Somewhere beneath our feet, perhaps, lie ruins of the ‘high-walled courtyard’ where the suitors gathered and the great hall with its pillars of cypress, couches, chairs and raucous banquets. Somewhere here, perhaps, the despairing Penelope worked at her loom, spinning funeral cloth for Laertes, Odysseus’ aged father. (She then secretly unraveled the cloth every night, having promised the suitors that she would wed one of them as soon as the cloth was completed.) Here, perhaps, with ‘a shield of fourfold hide’ and a plumed helmet on his ‘heroic head,’ Odysseus set to his bloody work. – from “Odyssey’s End? : The Search for Ancient Ithaca,” by Fergus M. Bordewich, Smithsonian Magazine

Robert Bittlestone’s book about his search for Ithaca, Odysseus Unbound : the Search for Homer’s Ithaca, was published by Cambridge University Press in October 2005.