Panigyri

On one dark blue midnight in the late summer of 1971, I climbed down the ladder of the Evangelistria, a rusty old tub of a ship, and set foot on the soil of Paros, a medium-size island in the Aegean Sea. I had been drawn to the island by pictures of many-colored fishing boats and snow-white cubical houses, and was curious about the people who created such beauty. I intended to stay three weeks. I stayed, the first time, five years. , and have visited often since then, fascinated by the island culture-at once spare and joyous, traditional but alive, pragmatic but grounded in spirituality. This book is an ode to the culture and the people of the village of Naousa, island of Paros in the Cyclades, Greece, as I knew them. Alison Cadbury Alison Cadbury has the sure touch of a born story-teller, which she combines with close observation of Greek village life. Most of what she writes she heard from her neighbors or saw for herself, living in Naousa, a village on the island of Paros. She is a good listener. If the tellers embroider a tale, they do so because they know she will absorb the smallest details and carry them into her own language. This is a book that will not only appeal to lovers of Greece but to those Greeks who have grown up in cities and never experienced what Seferis called the "rich order" that once characterized rural Greek life. Cadbury observes how the rituals, music, dancing and festivals create a life that is, as the villagers say, Kathiméra panigýri, "Everyday a celebration." Gail Holst-Warhaft, Author, Road to Rembetika