The Near East: Dalmatia, Greece and Constantinople

In 1913, on the eve of the First World War that would reshape the map of Europe, Robert Hichens embarked on a journey through the vanishing world of the Near East. This is travel writing from an age when Dalmatian fishing villages still pulsed with ancient rhythms, when Athens was quieter and the Parthenon stood less crowded, when Constantinople still bridged two continents and empires. Hichens writes with a novelist's eye for detail, capturing the pale Adriatic waters lapping against stone walls, the jasmine-scented evenings of the Greek coast, the call to prayer echoing over the Bosphorus. He observes the local people with curiosity and respect, their traditions, their crafts, their unhurried pace of life that seemed to belong to another century. This is a book for anyone who has wanted to glimpse the Mediterranean before modernity swept it away, to feel the particular melancholy of beauty that exists on the edge of disappearance.