South from Granada

“Gerald Brenan is generally regarded as the greatest of English writers about Spain. No other book describes with such vivid sympathy the essence of a remote rural area before the Civil War. Here, brought back to life, are the festivals and folk-lore of the Sierra Nevada, the rivalries, romances and courtship rituals, the village customs, superstitions and characters.
Equally compelling are chapters on Granada in the twenties, food and the Phoenicians, the cheap brothels and archaelogical remains of Almeria, the stark but haunting mountain scenery and even a visit from Virginia Woolf. The result was acclaimed on publication as a masterpiece; it remains a classic, richly evocative account of a lost way of life.”