Inventing Paradise ─ The Greek Journey, 1937-47

In the looming shadow of an oppressive dictatorship and imminent world war, George Seferis and George Katsimbalis, along with other poets and writers from Greece's fabled Generation of the 1930s, welcomed Henry Miller and Lawrence Durrell to their homeland. Together as they spent evenings in Athenian tavernas, explored the Peloponnese, swam off island beaches, and considered the meaning of Greek life and freedom and art, they seemed to be inventing paradise. In this remarkable synthesis of personal memoir, literary criticism, and interpretative narrative, Edmund Keeley explores the poetry; friendships, and politics that made those extraordinary encounters so vital.

Edmund Keeley served for some years as director of the Creative Writing Program and of the Program in Hellenic Studies and is now Charles Barnwell Straut Professor of English Emeritus at Princeton.