Syracuse
Sicily's City of Stories
Joachim Sartorius author Steven Brown translator
Format:Hardback
Publisher:Haus Publishing
Published:3rd Oct '24
Should be back in stock very soon
Endorsements: David Abulafia; Katherine Pangonis (author of Twightlight Cities);
Reviews: in TLS, LRB, travel magazines including Wanderlust and Timeess Travels, and other national papers
Unravelling the threads of Sicilian history, Sartorius explores the city’s mingling of ancient and modern, Greek and Arab, medieval and baroque, creating a portrait of a city inseparably entwined with its past.
Syracuse, on the eastern coast of Sicily, was one of the great cities of the ancient Mediterranean: a place of brute power, dazzling culture, and vivid myth. Here, tyrants waged wars and built vast palaces, Aeschylus staged tragedies, Plato hoped to create his ideal ‘philosopher king’, and the nymph Arethusa, transformed into water, lived on as a spring fringed with papyrus.
Moving to the city after a bereavement, the poet Joachim Sartorius discovers a place of haunting and haunted beauty, where the layers of the past are always visible. At his side we wander with demigods and generals through the old town of Ortigia and meet the people of the present-day city: its artists and police officers, café owners and barbers, barons and refugees.
Unravelling the threads of Sicilian history, Sartorius explores the city’s mingling of ancient and modern, Greek and Arab, medieval and baroque, creating a portrait of a city inseparably entwined with its past.
Reviews for My Cyprus
'A delightful book.' Times Literary Supplement
'A must-read for anyone heading to Cyprus or in need of a summery armchair getaway.' Metro
ISBN: 9781914982125
Dimensions: unknown
Weight: unknown
156 pages