A South Crete Travel Memoir: Peter Trudgill’s In Sfakia (2008)

I continue the tradition of publishing great reviews of worthy but obscure books on my Substack TLS newsletter with this review of Peter Trudgill’s 2008 memoir, In Sfakia: Passing Time in the Wilds of Crete (Lycabettus Press. Athens).

Drawing on the author’s personal travel agency going back to the 1970s, Trudgill tells a sort of combined social history and travelogue, bringing to life one of Crete’s wildest and most colorful micro-regions. The Sfakians have always been known for their peculiarities, their fierceness, their indigenous recipes and fishing-ports, as well as their gorges of pure wind and stone-peaked mountains. What this foreign writer adds to the mix beyond a typical survey discussion comes in the form of his anecdotes (some too haunting to give away until you’ve read it).

If you enjoy this newsletter, feel free to subscribe and send in your recommendations for future books you’d like to see reviewed and future topics to be covered there in the areas of history, culture, literature and writing.