Prosperos Cell (Faber Library 4): Guide to the Landscape and Manners of the Island of Corfu

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• Prospero's cell : a guide to the landscape and manners of the island of Corcyra.

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Would you also like to submit a review for this item? You already recently rated this item. Your rating has been recorded. Write a review Rate this item: Preview this item Preview this item. Faber and Faber Ltd. English View all editions and formats Rating: Subjects Corfu Island Greece -- Description and travel. So Durrell isn't a god any more: He's still an interesting writer, and Prospero's Cell is a legitimate travel classic.

View all 3 comments. Not my cup of tea unfortunately View all 4 comments. Feb 18, Ariel Evans rated it it was amazing. Somewhere between Calabria and Corfu the blue really begins. All the way across Italy you find yourself in a landscape severely domesticated--each valley laid out after the architect's pattern, brilliantly lighted, human. But once you strike out from the flat and desolate Calabrian mainland toward the sea, you aware of a change in the heart of things: In the morning you wake Somewhere between Calabria and Corfu the blue really begins.

In the morning you wake to the taste of snow on the air, and climbing the companion ladder, suddenly enter the penumbra of shadow cast by the Albanian mountains--each wearing its cracked crown of snow--desolate and repudiating stone. A peninisula nipped off while red hot and and allowed to cool into an antarctica of lava. You are aware not so much of a landscape coming to meet you invisibly over those blue miles of water as of a climate. You enter Greece as one might enter a dark crystal; the form of things becomes irregular, refracted. Mirages suddenly swallow islands, and wherever you look the trembling curtain of the atmosphere deceives.

Jan 10, Ryan Murdock rated it it was amazing Shelves: Born in colonial India in the foothills of the Himalayas but sent to boarding school in England, Lawrence Durrell hated the buttoned-up lifestyle of the north. When his father died he saw an opportunity to escape. Somehow, by some incredible art of persuasion, he convinced his mother to pack up their entire family—four children, of whom he was the eldest—and move them all to the Greek island of Corfu.

They lived a crazy island life with eccentric locals and writers dropping by—people like Freya S Born in colonial India in the foothills of the Himalayas but sent to boarding school in England, Lawrence Durrell hated the buttoned-up lifestyle of the north. They lived a crazy island life with eccentric locals and writers dropping by—people like Freya Stark and Patrick Leigh Fermor—and during all those years Durrell plugged away in a little stone house on the side of a mountain and taught himself to write.

Oct 07, Sandy rated it liked it Shelves: I enjoyed this book as a poetic and adult complement to Gerald Durrell's childhood memories of Corfu.

Many of the same characters reappear and are seen thru Lawrence's adult eyes. The epilogue is sad; the island seems to have been a bombing range during WWII. Feb 24, Josh rated it it was amazing. This is probably my favorite book to read and read again when the weather gets cold. Inspires travel lust and urges to quit one's job. A collection of Durrell's memories, journal entries and highly romanticized impressions from his travels in Corfu, Greece, before WWII. This review has been hidden because it contains spoilers. To view it, click here.

Read for Book Riots's "Read Harder" challenge: His flowery prose caught the imagination of a post-war generation, who relished his descriptions of "gigantic plane trees, the bluff ilex-grown fortresses They dive off the harbour to catch fish, they have moonlight picnics with friends, they eat breakfast in their little house: Lawrence Durrell had moved to the island much earlier with his mother and siblings. His brother, the animal-lover Gerald Durrell, eventually became much more famous and published his own memoirs of Corfu.

In Gerald's version of events, Lawrence lived with his mother. Gerald doesn't mention a beautiful wife at all. Finally, Sappho Durrell, Lawrence's daughter with his second wife he had 4 wives in all accused her father of sexual abuse. The abuse happened on the island, when Sappho was a teenager, living with her father after her mother had left him. This could partly explain why Lawrence Durrell is very rarely read now. I certainly found it to read his sensuous descriptions of landscapes without being a little creeped out: This is become our unregretted home.

I think I may have been a little harsh here. View all 5 comments. Apr 27, Sarah rated it really liked it Shelves: Durrell's prose is pure magic. Vivid yet subtle, it flirts with the Baroque without ever breaking the spell it casts on the reader.

Prospero's Cell

This is seductive travel writing at its finest. Particularly well done is the balance between descriptive prose and historical detail in order to bring the island to life out of a colourful past and into an uncertain present. The final note is a bitter sweet one, layered with nostalgia Jul 20, Alex. Rosetti rated it really liked it. Oct 11, Robert Zoltan rated it it was amazing. An other great book on the Greek Islands by Durrell. The ending moved me to tears.

Nov 17, David added it Shelves: Typically Durrell, lush to the point of over-ripeness, but very interesting. Feb 24, J. Written in journal format this is part history part travelogue of Corfu. Lawrence Durrell lived on Corfu for little over five years with his first wife Nancy Myers. Nancy has been airbrushed out of Gerald's account "My family and other animals" and doesn't feature much in Lawrence's account.

When she does feature she is dubbed "N". He moved to the island when he was twenty six years old. Ten sea-m Written in journal format this is part history part travelogue of Corfu.

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Ten sea-miles from the town, and some thirty kilometres by road, it offers all the charms of seclusion. A white house set like a dice on a rock already venerable with the scars of wind and water. The hill runs clear up into the sky behind it, so that the cypresses and olives overhang this room in which I sit and write". Lawrence wanted to live the bohemian life and indeed it did sound like a salubrious existence spending time engaging in 'pirofani' night fishing , swimming naked in the bathing pool near the shrine of St.

Arsenius, writing, drinking good wine and spending time with other intellectuals such as Theodore a doctor and erudite naturalist who features largely in Gerald's book "My family and other Animals". The wonderful Spiro is also mentioned.

He is a taxi driver, procurer of goods, tour guide and friend to the Durrell family. There is Zarian an Armenian poet, artist, polyglot and arts journalist. There is a section on the island Saint, St. Spiridion who is interred in a sarcophagus in a chapel that pilgrims can visit. Spiridion was not a local but a Cypriot shepherd originally. Many saints seem to have started their careers as shepherds. There are some great descriptions of traditional finery and dance. He captures the Greek people perfectly when he draws a comparison between the citizens on Corfu and the characters in Homer's 'Odyssey', "it is a portrait of a nation which rings clear to day as when it was written.

The loquacity, the shy cunning, the mendacity, the generosity, the cowardice and bravery, the almost comical inability of self analysis. The unloving humour and the scolding. Nowhere is it possible to find a flaw". Another little observation was the peasant measurement of time and distance which is done by cigarettes.

Lawrence's Corfu is a waking dream of languid detachment from English concerns and a salubrious existence. This book didn't always engage me. I found it to be too fragmented and unedited and as a result sometimes not self explanatory. Having visited the island I recognised one of the locations he described but if I was recommending a book to take to Corfu it would be Gerald's "My family and other animals".

Sep 09, hellocarmel rated it really liked it. Partly a diary of his time in Corfu with his eclectic and eccentric collection of Greek friends, partly a history of this fascinating island and partly a poetic homage to a beautiful part of the world, Prospero's Cell is an evocation of the largest of the Ionian Islands. From the times of Ancient Greece, when Odysseus allegedly fled to the island to the late s when this book was written, with the looming world war bringing menace to paradise, Durrell skips back and forth in time, telling var Partly a diary of his time in Corfu with his eclectic and eccentric collection of Greek friends, partly a history of this fascinating island and partly a poetic homage to a beautiful part of the world, Prospero's Cell is an evocation of the largest of the Ionian Islands.

From the times of Ancient Greece, when Odysseus allegedly fled to the island to the late s when this book was written, with the looming world war bringing menace to paradise, Durrell skips back and forth in time, telling various stories which eventually make up a rich picture. Reading the book while on the island itself was an absolute joy, as so much of the geography, architecture and indeed ways of life of the island's people remains as it was when Durrell was writing.

More literary and poetic than his brother Gerald, whose accessible and entertaining My Family and Other Animals is also set here, this was a fantastic and enjoyable introduction to Lawrence Durrell's writing for me, and I'm keen to follow it up with his celebrated Alexandria Quartet. Aug 01, izzy rated it liked it. Nov 05, Lucynell rated it liked it. Feeling very ambiguous about this slim part-memoir part-travelogue by Lawrence Durrell. Clarity, I think, is the issue here.

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Though the author relishes in attractive poetic form, whether describing people or places, the weather even, I felt as stumbling on air. Not a nice feeling. I believe I've come across books like this one before, very sophisticated stuff, often beautiful, usually confusing. A better reader will enjoy this much more than I did. Jun 05, Wim DG rated it it was ok Shelves: Page 1 you read: Some nice chapters, but not the book on Greece I thought it could be. Jan 26, Rachel Persad rated it liked it Recommended to Rachel by: Durrell's part memoir, part history, part cultural narrative offers a poignant insight into the life of Corcyra between the wars.

Enjoyable and charming, of a very different time. A great gift for anyone travelling to the Greek Islands. Jan 25, Katy rated it liked it. I think I enjoyed this book because it contains echoes of Gerald Durrell, in the same way that I like Beethoven's Eroica Symphony because it reminds me of his Pastoral Symphony. In both cases, though, what I really want is the one of which I'm being reminded. Apr 15, Jonathan rated it liked it.

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Mar 06, Vesna rated it it was amazing. Explicit, romantic and absolutely Greece. Its a painting in words!