The Flight of Ikaros: Travels in Greece During the Civil War

“An intense and compelling account of an educated, sensitive archeologist wandering the back country during the civil war. Half a century on, still one of the best books on Greece as it was before ‘development.’”—The Rough Guide to the Greek Islands

“He also is in love with the country . . . but he sees the other side of that dazzling medal or moon. . . . If you want some truth about Greece, here it is.”—Louis MacNeice, The Observer

“One of the best and most honest books about the modern Greeks.”—E. R. Dodds

In 1947, at the age of twenty-three, Kevin Andrews received a Fulbright Fellowship to study medieval fortresses in the Peloponnese. Andrews spent the long summers of 1948 to 1951 traveling through the region and the winters writing in Athens. This opportunity to travel through little-frequented areas during Greece’s postwar civil war—and before the advent of tourism, industrialization, or easy communications—brought Andrews into immediate contact with village populations, shepherd clans, and the paramilitary vigilantes who kept their own kind of order in the provinces, as well as with the displaced peasants of the Athenian slums. The close experience of all these lives took shape in The Flight of Ikaros, first published in 1959. Paul Dry Books is pleased to return to print this modern travel classic.

Kevin Andrews (1924–1989) was a writer and archaeologist. He wrote many books about Greece, of which he became a citizen in 1975.