Synopses & Reviews
Like the ancient colossus that stood over the harbor of Rhodes, Henry Miller's stands as a seminal classic in travel literature. It has preceded the footsteps of prominent travel writers such as Pico Iyer and Rolf Potts. The book Miller would later cite as his favorite began with a young woman's seductive description of Greece. Miller headed out with his friend Lawrence Durrell to explore the Grecian countryside: a flock of sheep nearly tramples the two as they lie naked on a beach; the Greek poet Katsmbalis, the "colossus" of Miller's book, stirs every rooster within earshot of the Acropolis with his own loud crowing; cold hard-boiled eggs are warmed in a village's single stove, and they stay in hotels that "have seen better days, but which have an aroma of the past."
Review
"The Colossus of Maroussi is probably unlike anything else ever written about Greece before....[Miller] is a natural born writer, and he sees things as nobody else sees them." Edmund Wilson
Review
"It doesn't seem far from a miracle to me, the emergence of as friendly and joyful a book." Paul Rosenfeld
Review
"One of the five greatest travel books of all time." Pico Iyer
Review
"Miller captures the spirit and warmth of the resilient Greek people in his story of a wartime journey from Athens to Crete." National Geographic
Review
"Miller's Colossus of Maroussi, a paean to Greece drawn out of a nine-month visit...is the gestation time for a human and, in Miller's case, for the imaginative re-creation of a country, a culture and his own fierce energies." Richard Eder, The New York Times
Review
"The Colossus of Maroussi is enchanting and so, by extension, is Henry Miller, as the book's exuberant, irrepressible protagonist. The book is a love letter to Greece, both a travelogue and a character study....[I]f you're at all interested in Greece, in language, or in an intelligently rendered ecstatic experience, you should certainly not, as I almost did, let The Colossus of Maroussi slip under your radar." Jill Owens, Powells.com (click here to read the entire Powells.com review)
Synopsis
Henry Miller's landmark travel book, now reissued in a new edition, is ready to be stuffed into any vagabond's backpack.
Synopsis
This book about Greece, by the author of Tropic of Cancerand Tropic of Capricornis incandescent with his feeling for a great people and their past.
About the Author
Henry Miller (1891-1980) was an American writer and painter infamous for breaking with existing literary forms and developing a new sort of "novel" that is a mixture of novel, autobiography, social criticism, philosophical reflection, surrealist free association, and mysticism, one that is distinctly always about and expressive of the real-life Henry Miller and yet is also fictional. His most characteristic works of this kind are Tropic of Cancer, Tropic of Capricorn, and Black Spring. His books were banned in the United States for their lewd content until 1964 when a court ruling overturned this order, acknowledging Miller's work as literature in what became one of the most celebrated victories of the sexual revolution.Will Self (b. 1961) is an English novelist and journalist. His Independent column of offbeat walking tours, "Psychogeography," has been collected into an eponymously titled book.Ian S. MacNiven (b. 1938) edited The Durrell-Miller Letters: 1935-1980.