A Selected Fiction? Lawrence Durrell and the Overgrown Typescript of Bitter Lemons

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Published: Apr 12, 2019
DOI: https://doi.org/10.12681/syn.16245
Keywords:
Lawrence Durrell Bitter Lemons Cyprus Rodis Roufos
David Roessel
Stockton University
Abstract

This article looks at previously unmined archival documents in order to explore the preand post-publication history of Lawrence Durrell’s Bitter Lemons, a travelogue written during the ‘emergency years’ of the EOKA campaign against British rule and for union with Greece. It examines the ways in which paratextual documents surrounding this publication history illuminate the awkward, sometimes contradictory, relationship between Durrell’s book and the last years of the British colonial government in Cyprus, a government for which Durrell worked as an employee in the Public Information Office.

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Author Biography
David Roessel, Stockton University
David Roessel teaches at Stockton University in New Jersey where he is Professor of Greek Language and Literature and Associate Director of The Pappas Center for Hellenic Studies. He is also a member of the Interdisciplinary Center for Hellenic Studies as well as the International Byron Society. He has translated numerous Ancient and Modern Greek texts and is the author of In Byron’s Shadow: Modern Greece in English and American Literature (Oxford University Press, 2001)
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