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Bitter Lemons of Cyprus

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Bitter Lemons is a passionate plea for "enosis" (i.e. the unity of Greece and Cyprus) written in the 1950s when Turkish and Greek Cypriots were at war. Lawrence Durrell loved Western Civilization with a passion and believed fervently that the great Greek genius of classical era was still alive in the 20 th century. As a teenager, I was utterly convinced. Today Sabri Tahir is 74 years old and still has a reputation as a rogue. One of his legs was shot off by a business rival, but on a recent morning in Nicosia, he was willing to speak warmly about his old friend. One of the first schools in Cyprus open in 1812 (under Ottoman rule) in the capital, Nicosia, the Pancyprian Gymnasium. If you survive through the house renovations and teenage girls fawning over a scrubby git namely their English teacher (who by the way gives a spookily detailed account of their adoration), you are rewarded with the worse part the book or what I choose to name as `How We Rule Imperially`. At this point, I was doggedly making further allowances for Durrell, reminding myself that the book was written on the second half of the 20th century, that men were then permitted, hell, even expected to think and act like they knew everything about everything even or especially when they were clueless, that that was the way cookie crumbled then, that Durrell was trying his best to be fair and understanding in his own snobbish way; but I am not going to play it down, Bitter Lemons is one of the most frustrating, ignorant and equivalently arrogant piece of work written by a member of an occupying power about the place they had occupied I have ever had the misfortune of laying my eyes upon. And this is quite telling, because I am from Turkey and when it comes to fascism in text, being objected to horrible instances of it since I was quite young, I lamentably know my stuff. See Faber authors in conversation and hear readings from their work at Faber Members events, literary festivals and at book shops across the UK.

Bitter Lemons of Cyprus: Life on a Mediterranean Island Bitter Lemons of Cyprus: Life on a Mediterranean Island

First, let us talk about the writing itself: gorgeous, of course. At time a little over the top, always evocative and very visually descriptive with the ability to make both the island of Cyprus and it's inhabitants spring to life. I think the first person narrative gives one an excellent character to follow through the story (though whether it might be a close portrayal of the author I have no idea) and see the countryside through, as it were. I mainly read nonfiction, so it was almost magical to read Lawrence Durell’s prose. Bitter Lemons of Cyprus (carefully chosen to coincide with my Greek vacation) has transported me for a week to a mesmerizing corner of Greece that no longer exists, or rather only exists in people’s memories. Journeys, like artists, are born and not made. A thousand differing circumstances contribute to them, few of them willed or determined by the will—whatever we may think. They flower spontaneously out of the demands of our natures—and the best of them lead us not only outwards in space, but inwards as well. Travel can be one of the most rewarding forms of introspection.…" Lawrence Durrell left his house and village behind -- and his book ends -- in 1956. In 1960, Britain surrendered sovereignty over Cyprus. Fighting between Greeks and Turks broke out in 1974, when a military junta tried to force union with Greece, and the island was effectively partitioned between the two groups. The government to this day has no control over the Turkish area. Enosis never occurred. Instead, Cyprus eventually joined Greece as another EC member, and adopted the Euro as its currency.Durrell was an extensive travel writer who has lived in several Greek and Italian islands, and also wrote books about them. His most famous and critically acclaimed work is the Alexandria quartet which I'm planning to read for Egypt. He was born in Jalandhar, British India, but didn't stay here for long.

Bitter Lemons of Cyprus - Lawrence Durrell - Google Books

This mountainside village epitomizes much that has drawn people to the Mediterranean since time immemorial. The air is fresh and fragrant, the people warm-hearted, and in the distance, beyond citrus groves and the majestic ruins of a Gothic abbey, the azure sea glistens and shines. All we know is that this guy never liked us,'' said Ozkan Tatlisulu, a local grocer. ''After we arrived in 1974 he immediately sold his house and moved away. Probably he didn't want to live with us.'' So were the events described in Bitter Lemons actually tragic? In the long run, things have more or less worked out. Cyprus, although still ethnically divided, is prosperous. I suspect that Bellapaix is still a friendly, sleepy village, and that Lawrence Durrell's hillside home with the wonderful views still exists. The medieval ruins still dot the landscape, the flowers still flower, and the dazzling sun still shines over the cerulean sea.The slender chain of trust upon which all human relations are based is broken -- and this the terrorist knows and sharpens his claws precisely here; for his primary objective is not battle. It is to bring down upon the community in general a reprisal for his wrongs, in the hope that the fury and resentment roused by punishment meted out to the innocent will gradually swell the ranks of those from whom he will draw further recruits."

Bitter Lemons of Cyprus by Lawrence Durrell – review, 30/11 Bitter Lemons of Cyprus by Lawrence Durrell – review, 30/11

It would have been easy to write a very different, more stereotypical book. As he discovered when working as a school teacher in Nicosia, the young Greeks were already writing that book. And in that act of national story telling was seeded an invasive weed which would eventually strangle the Tree of Idleness: the Cyprus tragedy. That other story was written under the drugged influence of Lord Byron, hero of Greek nationalism. Durrell tells of young students in his class reciting (badly) tales of Byron, with tears in their eyes. Byron the liberator, Byron the unifier. Throughout Durrell’s story, a paradoxical attitude amongst the Greek Cypriots is observed: they love and respect their British masters, and at the same time they want them off the island. Britain, personified by Byron (who helped to raise a navy to depose the Ottomans), signifies freedom, national unity, racial integrity, and most of all modernity. Greek nationalism, craving ‘enosis’ (unity), was jealous of the United Kingdom of Great Britain. No longer wanting to be treated as children of the Empire, ready to stand alone. In return, the colonial masters behaved with the usual incompetence and misunderstanding, imagining the Cypriots to be an eternally childish people, perhaps even noble island savages. Anthony Eden had more global and devious intentions (Cyprus being not far from Suez, Palestine, Syria), and in secret tensions between Turkey and Greece were being deliberately inflamed. But the colonial administration made a more basic error. Cyprus was part of a Europe that had changed, matured even. But the administration simply could not see that truth. It was no longer an island of farmers, but rather a homeland to a highly mobile international workforce, dispersed across Europe and America. The island that they thought they were governing, the island of the Tree of Idleness, was disappearing fast. And as Durrell smartly observes, by simply ignoring the issue for so long, an extremist result only became more likely – after all, there’s plenty of time to sit around under the tree, or in the café, continually exaggerating the nationalist story; the Cypriots being great story tellers. And as we walked across the carpets of flowers their slender stalks snapped and pulled around our boots as if they wished to pull us down into the Underworld from which they had sprung, nourished by the tears and wounds of the immortals." He views the increasingly violent campaign for Enosis from a different perspective, perhaps, than would most Americans today. His love for the Cypriot people is clear, but he firmly views them as a rural, somewhat childlike people who are far happier under British rule than they would be under union with an increasingly dynamic and urban Greek nation. Cypriot self-government apart from Greece does not even occur to him as an option. He perceives the Cypriot desire for Enosis as a vague goal the residents love to ponder and discuss, but one stirred into violent ferver only by agitation and arms from political zealots in Greece. He notes, in addition, the strong opposition to Enosis by the island's significant Turkish minority population -- a fault line between the ethnic Greeks and Turks that continues to this day. beautifully written, this book helps you understand Cyprus and more broadly how people go from somehow getting along to civil war, sort of... Here is a citation from the opening of the book about the value of travel, that I love: This book has taken me an extraordinarily long time to complete, part of that is the fact that it felt to me as though it had separate sections that did not always tie together.Then, British troops shoot three youths "under severe provocation" in Limassol, a "trivial" incident. No greater detail provided. His greatest recommendation? More police.

Bitter Lemons by Lawrence Durrell | Goodreads Bitter Lemons by Lawrence Durrell | Goodreads

Gasp! Oh! Greeks were let to keep their own religion and freedom and language and even local government! How can that be? It must be only because Turks did not have a superior culture to enforce upon others. Seriously, Mr. Durrell? This is how you read the political situation at the Mediterranean or at any place? Turks didn't impose their culture, language and religion upon others forcibly –unlike British- just because they'd assumed what they had was not worthy of imposing? Your friends must find your firm faith in human modesty quite refreshing, I am sure. The nerve of the clueless imperialist who readily accepts the first explanation that comes to his mind, off the top of his head.) In his book, however, Durrell makes no mention of personal troubles and says he left because he could not bear to see his beloved island consumed in a ''feast of unreason.'' A little tip for you: If I grind my teeth while reading, it's usually a bad sign - believe it or not. This was the case with The Bitter Lemons of Cyprus. At some point, I started to grind my teeth and hell broke after that.Lose yourself in this classic prize-winning memoir of life in 1950s Cyprus on the brink of revolution by the legendary king of travel writing and real-life family member of The Durrells in Corfu. Did it crossed his mind that Cypriots were not beautiful because they were slaves of races for centuries and centuries, did he realise that Cypriots were indolent because they were illiterate thanks to the dozens of masters they had above them and worst of all the Franks (yes, not the Ottoman Turks; you are surprised, yes, if you read the History of Cyprus you'll realised that Cyprus suffered worse hardships under the (Christian) Franks and Venetians and less under the (Muslim) Ottoman Turks?) Gasp! Oh! Greeks were let to keep their own religion and freedom and language and even local government! How can that be? It must be only because Tur The last question posed in the Times of Cyprus advertisement, how will it all end, remains unanswered to this day. Many Cypriots believe it all ended with the division of Cyprus in 1974, and it is now the official policy of the Turkish Cypriot leadership to cut the Gordian knot and negotiate for a two-state solution. During his stay, Durrell worked first as an English teacher at the Pancyprian Gymnasium, where several of his female students reportedly fell in love with him:

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