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Evia: Travels on an Undiscovered Greek Island (Tauris Parke Paperback) | 
 enlarge | Author: Sara Wheeler
Publisher: Tauris Parke Paperbacks
Category: Book
List Price: $15.95
Buy Used: $7.76
You Save: $8.19 (51%)
Rating:  1 reviews
Sales Rank: 1040683
Media: Paperback
Pages: 304
Number Of Items: 1
Shipping Weight (lbs): 0.8
Dimensions (in): 7.5 x 5 x 1.2
ISBN: 1845113403
Dewey Decimal Number: 914.95150476
EAN: 9781845113407
ASIN: 1845113403
Publication Date: May 1, 2007
Availability: Usually ships in 1-2 business days
Shipping: Expedited shipping available
Shipping: International shipping available
Condition: Good Customer Service. Will Package Well.
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| Editorial Reviews:
Product Description
The seahorse-shaped island of Evia – Euboia in classical history and Negroponte for many centuries – is the second largest in Greece, yet it is almost completely undiscovered by tourists. Separated from the mainland by only a sliver of sea, Evia has had a turbulent history. Today it encapsulates the Greece of decades ago – unspoilt and pristine, a haven for the more discerning traveller. Evia, Sara Wheeler’s first book, is the story of a five-month journey she made from the southern tip to the north of the island. Instantly enchanted by the landscape and languid pace of Evia, Wheeler immersed herself in the local way of life, where she witnessed centuries-old traditions, attended a goatherd’s wedding and Bronze-age excavations, was harassed by Orthodox nuns, and spent nights in monasteries and village homes. Her story is a beautifully rendered account of a way of life that in the rest of Greece has all but disappeared and of an island on the cusp of change.
Book Description
The seahorse-shaped island of Evia is the second largest in Greece, yet it is almost completely undiscovered by tourists. Separated from the mainland by only a sliver of sea, Evia has had a turbulent history. Today it encapsulates the Greece of decades ago -- unspoilt and pristine, a haven for the more discerning traveller. Evia is the story of a five-month journey Sara Wheeler made from the southern tip to the north of the island. Instantly enchanted by the landscape and languid pace of Evia, Wheeler immersed herself in the local way of life, where she witnessed centuries-old traditions, attended a goatherd's wedding and Bronze-age excavations, was harassed by Orthodox nuns, and spent nights in monasteries and village homes. Now with a new preface by the author, her story is a beautifully rendered account of a way of life that in the rest of Greece has all but disappeared and of an island on the cusp of change.
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| Customer Reviews:
Sara's Excellent Adventure June 19, 2008
Bruce Owen Brady (Santa Clara, California United States)
She may have written anonymous mash notes to her tutor, she may have penned brilliantly-argued letters to "The Times," but "Evia: Travels on an Undiscovered Greek Island" was travel writer and biographer Sara Wheeler's first book.
Originally published during 1992, "Evia" is her first-person account of several months that she spent walking, hitchhiking and occasionally riding a bus or driving a car on one of Greece's larger, yet lesser known, islands. She was often alone, during this Evian Odyssey, save for a carpet bag full of books and the friends she made along the way. Despite what can only be called risky behavior for a young woman, the worst thing she reports happening to her is a fall from the back of a moped into a pile of dung.
If the book had originally been intended as a tourist's guide, the current edition would be seriously out of date. It's not. Instead, "Evia" is an enduring tale of blue sea, white, sandy beaches, mountain trails, pine forests, monasteries and of fishermen, farmers, shepherds, housewives and others who people a primarily rural, mostly agrarian society, already in the process of change. It's the story of Sara's excellent adventure. It's also a history of Lombards, Romans, Turks and others who've come and gone and left their mark on the landscape, if not necessarily on the locals. The end result is a wonderful snapshot in time.
Sara Wheeler has some distinct ideas about travel writing which may contribute to her success. In "Evia," she writes: "The transformation of the journey into the book and the imagination brought to bear upon the material is what counts and perhaps the best writers of all could dispense with the journey and write their travel books without leaving the study." In her introduction to "The Best Travel Writing 2008," she expands on this thinking: "The journeys writers make are slip roads to the private colonies of the imagination...the eye that looks inward always sees a new landscape."
Like Tennessee Williams character Blanche DuBois, Ms. Wheeler had to depend upon "the kindness of strangers" to accomplish her task. Considering the number of strangers who did help her, she must be a woman who can charm a cranky crocodile.
As a Greek scholar, the language wasn't an issue for her, and she certainly knew how to draw people out. When a female office worker at a mining company told her that her union was all right, Ms. Wheeler suggested that there was talk of the union being corrupt. The worker shot back with, "Look, if you had honey on your fingers you'd lick it, wouldn't you?"
Humor is another Wheeler strongpoint. After failing to gain admittance to a local museum, she notes that, "The museum itself was temporarily closed, as it had been for nine years." When school children ask her if the British have a female prime minister (Margaret Thatcher) because all the men are homosexuals, she writes, "This was a difficult question to answer."
This reviewer's only potential quibble is with her use of trireme (trieres) to describe the ships which transported Agamemnon's minions from Aulis to Troy. As dedicated, ramming warships, triremes seem to have developed about five-hundred years after the action recounted in Homer's tales. Even if such ships had existed, they would have been needlessly expensive and a poor design choice to simply transport troops, horses and supplies. To be fair, the English-to-Greek section of the "Pocket Oxford Classical Greek Dictionary" defines "warship" as "trieres." The problem here is that Agamemnon would have almost certainly have used merchant ships. Perhaps historians and literary types just aren't reading the same book with this one.
When she wrote "Evia," Sara Wheeler had not yet fully evolved into the elegant prose stylist she has since become, but she was already a fine writer. In her introduction to the current edition, she says that the book was a labor of love. She then suggests that there was too much labor, too much love and not enough art. That's harsh. She describes a labor protest, during a mine strike on Evia as a "crucible of discontent." Anyone who can toss off lines like that and integrate as much material as she did into a coherent whole is getting it done. She also already had the wonderful ability to act as a facilitator for her readers' own mental travels.
"Evia" was the work of a bright, brash, funny, stunningly well-educated young woman with a load of moxie and a way with words. It's still worth the ride.
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