The Anatomy of Arcadia

A ‘travel book’ in more ways than one, The Anatomy of Arcadia is at the same time an account of a year spent on the Greek island of Paxos (whose inhabitants are surely among the most peculilar to be found in a land of eccentrics), a study of travel writing from the Attic Nights of Aulus Gellius to the present, an analysis of the myth of ‘Greece’, and a meditation on the illusion of Arcadia in its contemporary forms. This is a travel book, more in the tradition of Bruce Chatwin or Jonathan Raban. It is the picture of a country, an idea and a temptation.