Gwendolyn Macewen, Mermaids and Icons: A Greek Summer
Henry Miller, The Colossus of Maroussi
Honorable Mentions
Dily Powell’s An Affair of the Heart caught me by surprise. I’ve read many (many!) travelogues about visits to Greece, but not only had never read this work, I’m embarrassed that I hadn’t even heard of it.
The book covers a period from the 1930s to the 1950s. Powell’s visits to Greece are mainly about going back to places of her past. What’s changed, what’s the same? Are the people she spent time with alive? Was her memory accurate? Had her perception changed?
For many travelers, reconciling the current experience with a better, more idyllic time is a resonate topic. In Powell’s case, her initial visits were the high point of her life. Her husband, an archaeologist, was still alive, the Second World War had yet to happen, and the brutal Greek Civil War had yet to happen. So her return visits came under very different circumstances.
So we join along as she walks, swims, and snorkels around Greece. It’s a journey of memories, and from this, we got an excellent travel book.
Greece in Focus 