Customer Reviews

Bitter Lemons of Cyprus (Csa Travelling Companion S.)

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An evocative memoir of the author's stay [1953-6] in what's now Northern Cyprus. Much of the landscape was still as he described it when we visited Belle Pais, Famagusta, Kyrenia, and Nicosia, the Tree of Idleness and other sites on our hiking trip to Cyprus in 2001. His adventures in buying and maintaining a house rival those of Peter Mayle's "A Year in Provence"written many years later. The peaceful interludes in the hills are marred by foreshadowing of the political turmoil and tragedies that would engulf Cyprus in the following decades, leading to the departure of Durrell and other foreign nationals. Some of those towns and even cities remain ghost towns to this day. Once hard to find, this book has now been deservedly reissued.

I wouldn't want to spoil the thing by saying too much, but it was a very interesting read, aside from being intensely pleasant. There's a certain delicacy, about death, and strife, and the drinking of wine. Durrell is well spoken and well informed: you might think, like I did, that the story of Cyprus isn't politically relevant. But I only thought that because I'm an ignorant American, and because I had yet to read this lovely book.

Lawrence (Larry) Durrell was Public Relations Officer for the British Government on the island colony of Cyprus. As a reporter I knew him well. In Bitter Lemons Larry narrates his personal observations of a way of life rapidly disappearing, the Colonial Empire. Colorful cottages, crusader castles, Byzantine abbeys, picnics with ouzo and commanderia under the olive trees, and the characters -- British, Greek and Turkish Cypriots with their sometimes lovable, sometimes negative peculiarities, but very human idiosyncracies. Larry records a wonderful tapestry of human life in a colony that died in August 1960. Bitter Lemons: A work of literary art by a craftsman in love with Aphrodite's isle.

In the very first sentence of his book in the preface, Durrell starts out writing "This is not a political book, but simply a somewhat impressionistic study of the moods and atmospheres of Cyprus during the troubled years 1953-1956". In short, this is not a book one would want to read to obtain an idea of the geopolitical dimensions or counter-insurgency or even the domestic politics of Cyprus during this time. The strength of the book is the author's writing style and the "impressionistic" emotions surrounding his fictional trip to Cyprus. Most of the emotions stem not from major geopolitical events but in day to day encounters he has with the population and his various interactions with them. Nearly all of this are very basic but convey, like Hemingway's Old Man and the Sea, the "feel" and emotions surrounding these interactions and the author's observations. They are as quite moving and touching. The book definitely deserves its reputation.

Having read most of Durrell's books I personally feel this is his best. I agree with the other reviewers and would also like to take a trip in Durrell's footsteps and see an island which, according to my partner who lived there in the 80s, is still, in many ways, much as Durrell described it. That it could be torn apart by a vicious civil war is a tragedy and a salient warning of the dangers of outside interference and misplaced and misdirected nationalism. I highly recommend it.