Inventing Paradise: The Greek Journey, 1937-47

by Edmund Keeley

Book Overview

In the looming shadow of dictatorship and imminent war, George Seferis and George Katsimbalis welcomed Henry Miller and Lawrence Durrell to their homeland. Together, as they spent evenings in... This description may be from another edition of this product.

• Format: Hardcover
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0374177171
• ISBN13: 9780374177171
• Release Date: June 1999
• Publisher: Farrar Straus Giroux
• Length: 289 Pages
• Weight: 1.04 lbs.
• Dimensions: 1.1" x 5.9" x 8.6"

Customer Reviews

Beautifully written

A writer of outstanding repute in all his endeavors (translator, novelist, critic), Keeley has temporarily left aside all that academic stuff to write one of the five most beautiful books I have read in the past twenty years. Greek and Anglo literati like Seferis, Durrell and Miller come alive for us in these pages and special features of their work are examined with new depth. There are also some minor writers who serve as attractive backround to, and greatly enrich, the larger story. In his final paragraphs, Keeley hints that he might have a first person narrative in store for us covering a subsequent generation of philhellene writers. Let's hope he makes good on this almost-promise.

An enlightening book about the Generation of the Thirties

An interesting book about Henry Miller/Lawrence Durrill and the "Generation of the Thirties"-Greek poets that include Seferis, and painters such as Ghikas. The book is exactly what the NY Times calls it--a combination of literary history/critique, and cultural history. It tries to provide a deep understanding of the poetry from the decade before World War 2. It dispells the notion that Greece only has offered the world Homer & Pericles. Seferis, for example, won the Nobel Prize in Literature.