The Essential Hydra Reading List
Dip and dive into these texts which have been written by residents of Hydra, visitors to the island, or about this iconic 'Rock', as locals call it, and the people who lived on it.
Download the extended list of titles at the end of this page.
Peel Me a Lotus
Charmian Clift 1959
This book is the starting place for understanding Hydra and its Post-war development as a site for particular forms of tourism and its association with creative cultures - and of course Charmian Clift's own experience as an expatriate writer, wife and mother. Recent editions often include Clift's first travel memoir, Mermaid Singing - an equally valuable book dealing with her briefer experience on the island of Kalymnos.
Clean Straw for Nothing
George Johnston 1969
lean Straw for Nothing is the second book of George Johnston’s acclaimed, autobiographical ‘Meredith Trilogy’. As with the first in the series, My Brother Jack, it won the Miles Franklin Prize for Australian fiction. This volume focuses on the expatriate years of the hero David Meredith including his years on ‘the island’ (Hydra). Recent editions have often paired Clean Straw for Nothing with A Cartload of Clay, the final volume of the trilogy. Clean Straw can be read independently of the other volumes.
The Riders
Tim Winton 1994
Winton lived on Hydra for in the late 1980s, a period and experience recalled as a section of this novel which ranges across a number of European locations.
Iain Grandage, who wrote the music for adaptation of The Riders as an opera, described the novel as follows: "At its heart, The Riders is about the nature of love. It deals with questions of how well we can truly know someone; how well we can truly know ourselves."
A review in the Kirkus Review stated that, "Emotions, character, and intellect so perfectly calibrated that a modest story of love betrayed becomes, in Winton's hands, a minor masterpiece."
The Publishers Weekly described the novel as a 'suspense thriller" and a "gut-wrenching love story" and praise his descriptions of landscapes, the energy of his prose and call Winton "stunning".
Beautiful Animals
Lawrence Osborne 2017
On a hike during a white-hot summer break on the Greek island of Hydra, Naomi and Samantha make a startling discovery: a man named Faoud, sleeping heavily, exposed to the elements, but still alive. Naomi, the daughter of a wealthy British art collector who has owned a villa in the exclusive hills for decades, convinces Sam, a younger American girl on vacation with her family, to help this stranger. As the two women learn more about the man, a migrant from Syria and a casualty of the crisis raging across the Aegean Sea, their own burgeoning friendship intensifies. But when their seemingly simple plan to help Faoud unravels all must face the horrific consequences they have set in motion.
.png)
Travels With Epicurus
Daniel Klein 2012
Daniel Klein's book Travels with Epicurus; A Journey to a Greek Island in Search of an Authentic Old Age is a philosopher’s lightly ‘philosophical’ meditation on life and aging based on observations derived from time living on Hydra.
A regular visitor to the island throughput his life, he decides to stick with his dentures and instead use the money to make a trip back to Hydra and discover the secrets of aging happily. Drawing on the inspiring lives of his Greek friends and philosophers ranging from Epicurus to Sartre, Klein uncovers the simple pleasures that are available late in life, as well as the refined pleasures that only a mature mind can fully appreciate.
A Rope of Vines
Brenda Chamberlain 1965
Brenda Chamberlain, a Welsh artist and writer, lived on Hydra for several years in the early 1960s, but lived away from the bright lights and expat bubble of the harbour-side agora.
This memoir, a beautiful and personal account, recalls sea and harbor, mountain and monastery, as her neighbors and friends are unforgettably pictured; these were the realities outside herself while within there was a conflict of emotion and warring desires.
Joy and woe are woven fine in this the delight of a multitude of fresh experiences thronging to the senses, the suffering from which she emerges with new understanding of herself and human existence.
.png)
.png)
So Long Marianne
Kari Hesthamar 2014
Kari Hesthama's So Long Marianne: A Love Story is the ‘as told to’ autobiography of Leonard Cohen’s partner Marianne Ihlen, recounting their decade long romance during the 1960s, much of it spent amongst the Hydra expatriates.
At 22, Marianne Ihlen travelled to Hydra with writer Axel Jensen. Axel wrote and Marianne kept house, until the day Axel abandoned her and their newborn son for another woman. One day while Marianne is shopping in a little grocery store, in walks a man who asks her to join him and some friends outside at their table. He introduces himself as Leonard Cohen, then a little-known writer.