The Eye of the Xenos, Letters about Greece (Durrell Studies 3)

Reviews / Votes

"Richard Pine [...] is passionately engaged with the life of the island and the wider Greek world. Nonetheless he proudly claims the identification of "xenos", foreigner or outsider, and uses this vantage to deliver a frank commentary on his adopted country. [...] In 2015, Pine published Greece through Irish Eyes, and his new collection again pinpoints ostensible similarities between the two countries: a history of struggles for independence from the resented domination of a larger neighbour; a traumatic memory of civil war; a frontier issue (in Greece's case with Macedonia) that will not go away. Both countries have been subjected to condescending and prejudiced national cliches (Pine is very good on the "Balkanist" inventions of imperialist writers such as John Buchan). [...] Pine is equally attuned to the ways in which Greece and Ireland differ. Though both countries suffered the infliction of "austerity" measures after the economic crash, Greece's condition has remained critical. "Austerity", Pine remarks, was a way of life in Greece before the word acquired its recent connotations: "first, the austerity of the landscape, climate and geography; second, the facts of history imposing a subsistence existence on the vast majority of the people; and third, the economic conditions under which its 'independence' has been conducted"."Roy FosterProfessor of History, London University; The Irish Times, 10th July, 2021 "Richard Pine was among the first international commentators to understand that the Greek debt crisis was not so much about economics as about national identity, and that the measures imposed from outside threatened to undermine something more profound even than national sovereignty, something he calls Greekness. This book is at its heart an exploration of this concept of Greekness, the essential spirit that distinguishes the Greeks."Denis StauntonLondon Editor, The Irish Times"With his roving 'xenos' eye, Richard Pine captures the essential spirit of Greece and, in so doing, evokes the schisms and strains of his adopted homeland. It takes lyricism, bravura and a certain tenacity to so deftly dissect a nation that rarely takes the commentary of 'strangers' well. This book is awash with all three."Helena SmithAthens-based correspondent, The Guardian and The Observer