For millennia Greece has been a land of savage beauty and the Greeks a people of passion, valor, and viciousness. These features are at the fore in THE FLIGHT OF IKAROS, the account of a young American's travels across the Peloponnese between 1947 and 1951, most of that time pursuing archaeological studies of the ruins of castles and fortifications built by the Byzantines, Greeks, Franks, Turks, and Venetians. It was a time when Greece was emerging, ever so slowly, from the brutally harsh years of World War II and civil war - a time of depradation and recrimination, starkly yet lyrically portrayed in this book.
Andrews' sojourns were mostly in the Mani, in the mountains to the west of Sparta, and around the Corinthian isthmus. Frequently he travelled by foot, arousing the suspicions of the authorities (or vigilantes, as was often the case) but also stirring the boundless generosity of many denizens. From them, he heard innumerable tales of hardship and injustice, honor and fortitude, duplicity and insanity. He also made many friends, three of whom stand out:
Nikiphóros - a tubercular youth whom Andrews met during a stay in a hospital in Athens. Nikiphóros had been condemned to death by occupying Italian forces, freed by the Germans whom he repaid by working for a communist resistance group, drafted into the national army only to be imprisoned when his tenure with the communists was discovered, and finally released from jail thanks to his tuberculosis. His epigram: "We Greeks are a vile race on the whole, but there are moments when we have honour."
Kostandí - A leader of the right-wing Security Battalions near Sparta, who claimed to have killed over 500 soldiers in guerilla fighting during WWII and the Greek civil war, and who gave Andrews lodging in the dungeon-like home he had fashioned for his family amongst 15th-Century ruins, which also served as an armory for local anti-Communist guerillas.
Andoni - A peasant from the mountainous forests near Corinth, whom Andrews met while he was trekking and Andoni was pursuing his meager livelihood collecting resin from pine trees. Andrews eventually became godfather to one of Andoni's sons, and one of the highlights of the book is the account of the extended baptism ceremony and celebration.
THE FLIGHT OF IKAROS was first published in 1959. Andrews revised it in 1984, making it a more partisan leftist and anti-American book. By that time, Andrews, totally bewitched by the country, had become a permanent resident and citizen of Greece. This admirable edition - published by Paul Dry Books, a publisher for whom I now will keep an eye out - uses the original 1959 text, in which no particular political position or ideology is embraced. They all, at bottom, appear anti-human. At one point in the book Andrews asks an old man on the road with his donkey which side had committed more crimes, the Left or the Right. His answer: "I can only tell you that the side which happens to be in power has more opportunity to commit them."
Anyone fascinated with the perversities and paradoxes of humanity probably will find THE FLIGHT OF IKAROS worth her time. For those with a specific interest in Greece, it is an excellent eyewitness portrait of the country and the Greeks at a crucial time in history. Furthermore, not only is it informative and engaging, but it is well-written, especially the descriptions of the Peloponnesian landscape. And at times it exhibits a philosophical bent: "I'll probably tell myself some day my travels have represented the famished quest for a knowledge of human beings, that prudence or common sense or indeed any economy not strictly financial only leads away from life, and that the true traveller should be the world's greatest fool."
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Top reviews from other countries
Jim KABLE
Greece - Land of Dreams - and Nightmares!
Reviewed in Australia on April 9, 2015
R. A. Jinkinson
Perhaps the best Travel Book Ever
Reviewed in the United Kingdom on July 24, 2006MRLM
absorbing book about Greece in the aftermath of war
Reviewed in the United Kingdom on November 23, 2012kobeelya
A very rare book to find these days
Reviewed in the United Kingdom on December 3, 2013