To keep us all safe, warm, and connected, let’s share a weekly book club that involves international intrigue, ethnic lines divided and the story of one man’s journey through it all. Laurence Durrell was a British expatriate, world traveler, poet and novelist. He is now famous for his PBS Masterpiece series The Durrell’s in Corfu. But before he landed in Greece, he was a Foreign Service officer for the British government and enjoyed living in the Eastern Mediterranean. He spent nearly a decade in another gorgeous Mediterranean island, Cyprus.
Join OLLI Eat Like a Greek! Instructor Claudia Veysel this winter to read and review Bitter Lemons, an autobiographical work by Durrell penned in his home village of Bellapais, less than a mile from Claudia’s own personal home. Nestled under the olive and pine trees, with the blue Mediterranean Sea stretching below. Durrell wrote steadily his vision of the unravelling of the British Colony of Cypris and how it became an independent country in its own right. Cyprus is a full member state of the European Union and enjoys a high quality of life, long life expectancy, low crime rates, sunny skies and is simply an awesome place to call home.
