''Their years in the Aegean may have been half perfect at best, but it was on Hydra that they connected to a place, a lifestyle and a community that allowed them to live and express themselves intensely, and as they wished. They refused to believe their dreams were an illusion, or that boldness, ambition and a leap-of-faith might not allow them to reach beyond the constraints of their birthright'.
'Half the Perfect World tells the story of the post-war international artist community that formed on the Greek island of Hydra. Most famously, it included renowned singer-songwriter Leonard Cohen and his partner Marianne Ihlen, as well as many other artists and writers including the Australian literary couple, Charmian Clift and George Johnston, who fostered this fabled colony.
'Drawing on many previously unseen letters, manuscripts and diaries, and richly illustrated by the eyewitness photographs of LIFE magazine photo-journalist James Burke, Half the Perfect World reveals the private lives and relationships of the Hydra expatriates. It charts the promise of a creative life that drew many of them to the island, and documents the fracturing of the community as it came under pressure from personal ambitions and wider social changes. For all the unrealised youthful ambitions, internal strife and personal tragedy that attends this story, the authors nonetheless find that the example of these writers, dreamers and drifters continues to resonate and inspire.' (Publication summary)
In May 2019, it was reported that Half the Perfect World would be adapted for film. The film adaptation rights were acquired by Cascade Films. (Books + Publishing News)
'It is worth bearing in mind that a classic of the post-war Australian novel, My Brother Jack, owes its existence to the incredible patience and generosity of a grocery store/kafenion owner on the island of Hydra.' (Introduction)
'My Brother Jack, George Johnston’s tilt at the Great Australian Novel, is distinguished for being penned from afar—not from Patrick White’s England, nor from Christina Stead’s adopted America, but from a place altogether more foreign and remote: the island of Hydra in Greece’s Saronic Gulf.' (Introduction)
'In August 1964, Charmian Clift returned to Australia from the Greek island of Hydra after nearly fourteen years abroad. As Paul Genoni and Tanya Dalziell portray her return – a description based, as always in this book, on solid or at least reasonably persuasive evidence – she ‘was leaving her beloved Hydra forever, with the pain of her departure sharpened by the sting of humiliation and exile’. By the time the return voyage had begun, she later recalled, ‘the audacious bite of decision has long since been blunted … The freshness of the adventure has worn off and uncertainty, alas, is practically all that remains.’' (Introduction)
'Joice NanKivell Loch’s life was dedicated to helping others. It was a role she wrote about in her autobiography, A Fringe of Blue (1968), which she completed with assistance from friends while recovering after a bad fall from a worm-eaten balcony of the Byzantine tower on the Athos peninsula in eastern Greece where she had lived for most of the preceding four decades. This essay thinks concurrently about her two commitments—to writing and to humanitarian work—as they come together in A Fringe of Blue. Of particular interest are long sections of NanKivell Loch’s autobiography that have as their focus her experiences in the Aegean, where she made her home and found herself a neighbour to refugees she had initially set out to assist.' (Publication abstract)
'It is worth bearing in mind that a classic of the post-war Australian novel, My Brother Jack, owes its existence to the incredible patience and generosity of a grocery store/kafenion owner on the island of Hydra.' (Introduction)
