Open Daily: 10am - 10pm | Alley door pickup 10am - 7pm 3038 Hennepin Ave Minneapolis, MN
612-822-4611

  • Open Daily: 10am - 10pm
    Alley-side Pickup: 10am - 7pm

    3038 Hennepin Ave Minneapolis, MN
    612-822-4611

Open Daily: 10am - 10pm | Alley-side Pickup: 10am - 7pm
3038 Hennepin Ave Minneapolis, MN
612-822-4611
Half the Perfect World: Writers, Dreamers and Drifters on Hydra, 1955-1964

Half the Perfect World: Writers, Dreamers and Drifters on Hydra, 1955-1964

Dalziell, Tanya
Genoni, Paul

Hardcover

Series: Biography

ArtistsGeneral World HistoryGreek History

Currently unavailable to order

ISBN10: 1925523098
ISBN13: 9781925523096
Publisher: Monash University Publishing
Published: Oct 1 2018
Pages: 456
Weight: 1.75
Height: 1.00 Width: 6.60 Depth: 9.60
Language: English
The years in the Aegean may have been, at best, half perfect, but it was on Hydra that they connected to a place, a lifestyle and a community that allowed them to live and express themselves intensely, and as they chose. They refused to believe their dreams were an illusion, or that belief in their own abilities and a leap-of-faith might not allow them to reach beyond the constraints of their birthright. Half the Perfect World tells the story of the postwar international artist community that formed on the Greek island of Hydra. Fostered by Australian literary couple George Johnston and Charmian Clift and including, most famously, renowned singer-songwriter Leonard Cohen, this fabled colony fully embraced the creative and social opportunities and existential challenges of its remote Aegean lifestyle. By drawing on many previously unseen letters, manuscripts and diaries, and richly illustrated by the eyewitness photographs of LIFE photo-journalist James Burke, Half the Perfect World reveals the personal relationships and the working and social lives of the Hydra expatriates. It charts the promise of artistic bohemianism that drew many of them to the island, and documents the fracturing of the community as it came under pressure from personal ambitions and wider social changes. For all the internal strife, personal tragedy and unrealised youthful ambition that attend their story, the spirit of Hydra's writers, dreamers and drifters continues to resonate and inspire.

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