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It became unexpectedly topical as I was reading ! ( )

This was my first read by Lawrence Durrell who is most famous for the Alexandria Quartet. This is just a little memoir of the three years he spent on the island of Cyprus. While the book starts out a light-hearted memoir not unlike Under the Tuscan sun--expat moves in and begins renovating a house surrounded by local colorful characters--the book eventually turns a bit darker. Cyprus was rapidly ending its relationship with the British empire and terrorism and nationalism was taking hold.

So interesting to read this on the heels of Alexandra Fuller's Cocktail Hour Under the Tree of Forgetfulness. Another book about British expats as the curtains close on Colonialism, this time set in Africa. Interesting that both books feature a tree--in Fuller's book, that tree is one on her parent's property that is rumored to be a place of healing. In Durrell's book is a Tree of Idleness in the center of the Square where men also go to forget and while away the hours. I'm surrounded by trees, so the thought of sitting in the shade on a hot summer's day seems so exotic to me.

Durrell's prose is fantastic. One of the final chapters in the book is so beautifully written. Durrell takes one last day trip with an island friend (a school master) to pick flowers by the sea. The description of that entire trip from the gathering of the flowers to descriptions of land once owned long ago by ancient Greeks:

"And as we walked across the carpets of flowers their slender stalks snapped and pulled around our boots as if they wished to pull us down into the Underworld from which they had sprung, nourished by the tears and wounds of the immortals."

And this about and words from his friend Panos which are even more poignant with the knowledge that a few days after this meeting, Panos was killed.

"The sun was approaching mid-heaven and great lion pads of rock among the foothills were already throwing us forward their reflections of shadow. Panos put away his spectacles and fell to cutting up the coarse brown loaf, saying as he did so: "On days like this, in places like these, what does it all matter? Nationality, language, race? These are the invention of the big nations. Look below you and repeat the names of all the kings who have reigned over the kingdoms of Cyprus; of all the conquerors who have set foot here--even the few of whom written records exist! What does it matter that we are now alive, and they dead--we have been pushed forward to take our place in the limelight for a moment, to enjoy these flowers and this spring breeze which ... am I imagining it? ... tastes of lemons, of lemon blossom."

A beautifully written book that has some echoes in our world today and I look forward to reading more from Durrell. ( )

Describe los tres años, entre 1953 y 1956, en que el autor de ese hito de la narrativa erótica que es el Cuarteto de Alejandría, residió en la isla de Chipre en el Mediterráneo. Tras años opacos haciendo de diplomático en Argentina y Yugoslavia, relata el escritor británico nacido en Darjeeling, India, lo que más deseaba en la vida era retirarse, comprar una casa barata en un lugar tranquilo, de preferencia aislado, arreglarla a su modo y vivir sin saber del resto del mundo. ( )

51/2020. The main problem with this combination of memoir and travelogue is that the author tends to get in the way and, in this case, the author isn't a pleasant companion. One does have to admire his honesty, or one would have to admire his honesty if it wasn't apparent that he thinks he's clever, witty, and charming company. Anyone who has read the acutely accurate portrayal of Larry in his brother Gerald Durrell's book My Family and Other Animals will already have a more realistic view of Lawrence Durrell (although the child's eye view is minus the adult Larry's right-wing colonialist politics).

I also note that upper middle class Brits who claim they want to slum it with the peasantry almost never do so with the working classes in their own country. In fact Durrell pointedly dismisses the urban working class in Cyprus for being too much like their counterparts in Manchester.

His claims that Cypriots didn't want "enosis" are extremely disingenuous as about 77% of the local population and 96% of ethnically Greek Cypriots had already voted in favour of union with mainland Greece (and an end to British colonial rule).

The author does occasionally put his intelligence and education to good use. There are some nice turns of phrase and even a few telling observations, mostly on the colonial Brits in Cyprus, that escape his brain and find their way into the book. Whether it's worth wading through the additional verbiage and anecdotage is, of course, reader's choice. I chose to finish this as part of my current reading project, which like all similar undertakings has led to the the discovery of unexpected gems and disappointing dullards. Bitter Lemons of Cyprus manages to be both simultaneously.

"Never has one seen such extraordinary human beings as those who inhabited the Dome Hotel; it was as if every forgotten Victorian *pension* between Folkestone and Scarborough had sent a representative to attend a world conference on longevity." ( )