The Flight of Ikaros

“On a chance commission to study medieval fortresses, Kevin Andrews found himself travelling, in the late forties, through Greece in the turmoil of a bloody civil war. His outstanding book is neither about fortresses nor about politics. Instead it reads like a novel and provides perhaps the first, certainly the most vivid, candid and memorable picture of modern Greek peasant life.

Somehow Andrews managed to cut through the traditional barriers of hospitality and suspicion. In becoming god-brother to a shepherd clan, or hearing the terrifying story of Pappastavros, the village priest, or in his unlikely friendship with the charming and violent Kostandi, he experienced all the ferocity, warmth, delicacy and impatience of the Greek people whom, in The Flight of Ikaros, he captures alive on the page.”