Falling for Icarus: A Journey Among the Cretans - Softcover

Rory MacLean

3.67

52 ratings by Goodreads

9781848859562: Falling for Icarus: A Journey Among the Cretans

Softcover

ISBN 10: 1848859562 ISBN 13: 9781848859562

Publisher: Tauris Parke Paperbacks, 2011

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On a windy spring morning in an ancient Cretan village, Rory MacLean fell to earth. His mother had died a few months earlier and a single obsession had risen from his grief: the notion to build a feather-light flying machine. And so, on the island where Daedalus and Icarus had made mankind's maiden flight, MacLean journeyed back to beginnings, back into the Greek myths, and - with the help of his Cretan neighbours and plenty of wine - built a plane and tried to fly. 'Falling for Icarus' is at once a meditation on love, a celebration of the passion for flight and an hilarious, vivid portrait of a village. Its generous and exhilarating characters - Yioryio, the irrepressible cafe owner, dreamy, dying Aphrodite and divine Apostoli, would-be pilot and Greek god in a golden flying suit - restore MacLean's faith in life. Through them, he tells a soaring, moving story about how a dream can transform sadness. Reviews: 'The heart-warming evocation of one man's loving obsession: lyrical, funny, compassionate' - Colin Thubron; 'Touching, funny and informative... MacLean is a wonderfully deft writer' - The Sunday Telegraph; 'An intimate portrait of modern, rural, unheroic but still passionate Crete' - Sunday Times; 'Anyone who loves Crete should enjoy this book. And anyone who does not love Crete is only half alive' - William Palmer, Literary Review; 'A marvellously compelling story by any standards... destined to become a classic' - The Scotsman; 'Unbridled humour, suspense... [characters] spring from the page as if from myth' - Scotland on Sunday

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Review:

'A book that mixes lyricism with humour and compassion... MacLean's writing is at once whismical and serious, funny and painful...an intimate portrait of the sort of community we might not otherwise have encountered outside fiction' --Anthony Sattin, Sunday Times

'Touching, fresh and extremely funny. MacLean's prose moves elegantly from the elegiac to the ironic, from the sad to the grotesque or comic. A triumph.' --The Times Literary Supplement (TLS)

'An extraordinary work, curious and entertaining, tantalizing, often moving and above all entirely original - like everything MacLean writes, it's in a genre of its own' --Jan Morris

'a remarkable book... real and genuinely exciting.' --Guardian

'An extraordinary work, curious and entertaining, tantalizing, often moving and above all entirely original - like everything MacLean writes, it's in a genre of its own' --Jan Morris

About the Author:

Rory MacLean is a writer, broadcaster, blogger and Fellow of the Royal Society of Literature. His nine books, including UK best-sellers 'Stalin's Nose' and 'Under the Dragon', have challenged and invigorated travel writing, and - according to the late John Fowles - are among works that 'marvellously explain why literature still lives'. He has won awards from the Canada Council and the Arts Council of England as well as a Winston Churchill Travelling Fellowship, and was nominated for the International IMPAC Dublin Literary Award. He has written and presented over 50 BBC radio programmes and worked on movies with Marlene Dietrich and David Bowie. Born in Canada and resident for many years in Britain, Rory now divides his time between London and Berlin. 'Rory MacLean is one of the most strikingly original and talented travel writers of our generation.' - Katie Hickman; Other books by Rory MacLean: Stalin's Nose, The Oatmeal Ark, Under the Dragon, Next Exit Magic Kingdom, Magic Bus, Missing Lives (with Nick Danziger), Gift of Time; www.rorymaclean.com

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