An evocative and lyrical history of Cyprus and the Mediterranean.Think of a place where can you stand at the intersection of Christian and Arab cultures, at the crossroads of the British, Ottoman, Byzantine, Roman and Egyptian empires; a place marked by the struggle between fascism and communism and where the capital city is divided in half as a result of bloody internal conflict; where the ancient olive trees of Homer''s time exist alongside the undersea cables which provide the world''s internet. In Cypria, named after a lost Cypriot epic which was the prequel to The Odyssey, British Cypriot writer Alex Christofi writes a deeply personal, lyrical and historical portrait and history of the island of Cyprus, from ancient times to the present day. This sprawling, evocative and poetic book begins with the legend of the cyclops - now thought to have come from the skeletons of elephants fossilized in the stone - and the tales and storytelling at the heart of the Medite
