The Flight of Ikaros

"One of the great and lasting books about Greece."—Patrick Leigh Fermor

"Kevin Andrews experienced the dangers of the countryside during the civil war. The Flight of Ikaros, the book he produced from his travels, remains not only one of the greatest we have about postwar Greece—memorializing a village culture that has almost vanished—but also one of the most moving accounts I have ever read of people caught up in political turmoil…Flight was first published in 1959 and last reprinted by Penguin in 1984. For too many years, this rare account has languished out of print."—Wall Street Journal

“An intense and compelling account of an educated, sensitive archeologist wandering the back country during the civil war. Half a century on, still one of the best books on Greece as it was before ‘development.’”—The Rough Guide to the Greek Islands

“He also is in love with the country…but he sees the other side of that dazzling medal or moon…If you want some truth about Greece, here it is.”—Louis MacNeice, The Observer

“One of the best and most honest books about the modern Greeks.”—E. R. Dodds

In 1947, at the age of twenty-three, Kevin Andrews received a Fulbright Fellowship to study medieval fortresses in the Peloponnese. Andrews spent the long summers of 1948 to 1951 traveling through the region and the winters writing in Athens. This opportunity to travel through little-frequented areas during Greece’s postwar civil war—and before the advent of tourism, industrialization, or easy communications—brought Andrews into immediate contact with village populations, shepherd clans, and the paramilitary vigilantes who kept their own kind of order in the provinces, as well as with the displaced peasants of the Athenian slums. The close experience of all these lives took shape in The Flight of Ikaros, first published in 1959. Paul Dry Books is pleased to return to print this modern travel classic.

Kevin Andrews (1924–1989) was a writer and archaeologist. He wrote many books about Greece, of which he became a citizen in 1975.