num_pages: 276
description: Bitter Lemons of Cyprus is Lawrence Durrell's unique account of his time in Cyprus, during the 1950s Enosis movement for freedom of the island from British colonial rule. Winner of the Duff Cooper Memorial Prize, it is a document at once personal, poetic and subtly political - a masterly combination of travelogue, memoir and treatise.'He writes as an artist, as well as a poet; he remembers colour and landscape and the nuances of peasant conversation ... Eschewing politics, it says more about them than all our leading articles ... In describing a political tragedy it often has great poetic beauty.' Kingsley Martin, New Statesman'Durrell possesses exceptional qualifications. He speaks Greek fluently; he has a wide knowledge of modern Greek history, politics and literature; he has lived in continental Greece and has spent many years in other Greek islands ... His account of this calamity is revelatory, moving and restrained. It is written in the sensitive and muscular prose of which he is so consummate a master.' Harold Nicolson, Observer
language: English
title: Bitter Lemons of Cyprus
titlecomplete: Bitter Lemons of Cyprus
characters: Lawrence Durrell, John Lehmann, John Harding, 1st Baron Harding of Petherton, Alan Lennox-Boyd, 1st Viscount Boyd of Merton, Makarios III, Rose Macaulay, Austen Harrison, Sir Robert Armitage, Claude-Marie Vincendon, Gerald Durrell, Georgios Grivas, Patrick Leigh Fermor, Sir Harry Luke
genres: Classics, Autobiography, History, Travel, Biography Memoir, Biography, Greece, Literature, Memoir, Nonfiction
ratings_count: 2404
places: Cyprus, Nicosia, Kyrenia, Bellapaix, British Empire
awards: awardedAt: -410198400000
name: Duff Cooper Prize
publisher: Faber & Faber