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

David Roessel

doi:10.12681/syn.16245

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.

Highlights

: our view of reality is conditioned by our position in space and time—not by our personalities as we like to think
Roufos had served as Greek consul for Cyprus from 1954 to 1956, the very years that Durrell was employed by the Public Information Office (PIO) of the Colonial Government
Roufos was a fierce proponent of Enosis, union of the island with Greece, and conveyed messages between the Greek government and George Grivas, the leader of the guerilla organization EOKA, whose initials stand for the National Organization of Cypriot Fighters (Kranidiotis 159)

Summary

Introduction

: our view of reality is conditioned by our position in space and time—not by our personalities as we like to think. In a passage directly addressing Bitter Lemons that was excised when the text was published, Roufos’s narrator says that Durrell’s effort was: not exactly the kind of book I had had in mind.

Results

Conclusion