Book
Journey into Cyprus
First published 1975
In the spring of 1972 Colin Thubron sets out on foot across Cyprus, covering about six hundred miles through mountain villages, coastal towns, monasteries and archaeological landscapes. Moving between Greek Cypriot and Turkish Cypriot communities, he records hospitality, local customs, religious traditions and the island’s layered inheritance from the ancient Mediterranean, Byzantium, the Lusignans, Venice and the Ottoman Empire.
The journey took place at a moment of deceptive calm. Constitutional breakdown and intercommunal violence during the previous decade had left communities divided and politics unresolved; within two years the 1974 coup and Turkish military intervention would produce mass displacement and the island’s de facto partition. Thubron’s account therefore preserves Cyprus immediately before that rupture, while allowing myth, architecture and everyday life to reveal histories deeper than the approaching political crisis.
Historical Periods
More by the author
Other books by Colin Thubron
