Bitter Lemons of Cyprus

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The government instead persists in treating the movement as merely the obsession of a few isolated hotheads -- first to be ignored and then, to be put down with force.

Bitter Lemons of Cyprus - Lawrence Durrell - Google Books Bitter Lemons of Cyprus - Lawrence Durrell - Google Books

At time a little over the top, always evocative and very visually descriptive with the ability to make both the island of Cyprus and it's inhabitants spring to life. Sadly it seems that it’s lesson has been largely ignored by the politicians who might just have made a difference to those terrible developments.Initially my reaction as an Hellenophile is one of sadness and sorrow at the short sighted-ness of the British Government at the time.

Bitter Lemons of Cyprus - Lawrence Durrell - Google Books

Then, British troops shoot three youths "under severe provocation" in Limassol, a "trivial" incident. They flower spontaneously out of the demands of our natures—and the best of them lead us not only outwards in space, but inwards as well.The question of Enosis--independence from Britain and union with Greece begins to overwhelm all the other questions, including those of safety. Written in an erudite yet graceful style, the book describes the beauty of the island, the leisurely pace of life there, and some of the colorful local inhabitants. Then, in keeping with brief references in his little brother's book, he picks a high point in his house to slowly eat grapes and crack the whip on Greek workmen who may be lingering to tell the stories he loves so much. As a conservative, I fully understand, namely; 'If you have an Empire, you just can't give away bits of it as soon as asked.

Bitter Lemons by Lawrence Durrell | Goodreads Bitter Lemons by Lawrence Durrell | Goodreads

Durrell was not enamoured with the Greek Cypriot militants, however, and felt that they were dragging the island to a "feast of unreason" and that "embedded so deeply in the medieval compost of religious hatreds, the villagers floundered in the muddy stream of undifferentiated hate like drowning men. But at the end of the day, he's a repulsive reactionary, a proud imperialist, and even though he's smart enough to see all the contradictions of the colonial regime in Cyprus -- the deliberate underdevelopment, the dimwitted little-Englander officials, the way repressive measures invariably give credibility to the anticolonial fighters, an honest respect for the idealism of the Cypriot youth who want freedom -- he still can't escape the notion that an abstract empire is the best steward of his much-adored classical civilization, and like his mentor T. In fact there are many, small and large, all bobbing around the shallows of the Eastern Mediterranean with varying degrees of shipwrecked helplessness.He blames the uprising on Athens, alluding that the Cypriots were happy with British rule and unable to create any such tension on their own. Bitter Lemons of Cyprus (carefully chosen to coincide with my Greek vacation) has transported me for a week to a mesmerizing corner of Greece that no longer exists, or rather only exists in people’s memories. Within a setting of richly idiosyncratic characters is the intense Justine, wife to the wealthy business man Nessim, whose emotional and sexual wildness fuels a high-charged atmosphere. Into this escalating conflict steps Lawrence Durrell—poet, novelist, and a former British government official. Having said that, this story was an engaging tale of life so far removed as to be in a galaxy far, far away.