The Sea and the Stone
About this ebook
In the cradle of civilization, rocked by the waters of the blue Aegean, lies the tiny, barren island of Kalymnos. It is cloaked in antiquity and rich with the vibrant life of a proud and passionate people who have stubbornly endured the ravages of man and nature for three thousand years. And yet Kalymnos is dying, its means of survival crushed beneath the juggernaut of progress.
Here is a moving story of this doomed, enchanted island, of a strong man and a strange, haunting woman who lived there, of a tormented girl who fled there, and of a wanderer who came, seeking...
It is a story of unique power and simple splendor, a fiction rooted deep in truth.
"...stirring...It is an elemental story of the raging sea and the rocky land, of the fundamental urges of man and woman...a story of great beauty and surging excitement..."—Boston Herald
"...what they have seen, heard, felt in Kalymnos...make a vivid story, written as modern painters paint, not lingeringly, nor sentimentally, but with great splashes of significant color..."—New York Herald Tribune
"...a lyrical and rugged account...of a virile race, almost pure descendants from the men who once sent their war galleys to ancient Troy..."—Springfield Republican
"...a powerful and sad, beautifully written tale."—Newark News
"This is stark, brutal fiction based on fact. The dynamic, incisive and beautiful prose is worthy of a Hemingway..."—Grand Rapids Herald
"Kalymnos as a place is most effectively presented, with a fine feeling for wind and weather, sea and sky, and a sustained brightness of natural detail. Also, the collective life of the islanders is very convincingly treated, with understanding and concern."—Chicago Tribune
"...superb...It paints murals of truth..."—Saturday Review
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About the author
CHARMIAN CLIFT (30 August 1923 - 8 July 1969) was a mid-20th century Australian writer and essayist.
Born in Kiama, New South Wales, she married George Johnston in 1947. After the pair's collaboration High Valley (1949) won them recognition as writers, they left Australia with their young family, working in London before relocating to the Greek island of Hydra to try living by the pen.
George Johnston returned to Australia to receive the accolades of his Miles Franklin Award-winner My Brother Jack, and Clift moved back to Sydney with their children in 1964, after which her memoirs Mermaid Singing (1956) and Peel Me a Lotus (1959) and her novel Honour's Mimic (1964) became successes. She also wrote some 240 essays between 1964-1969 for The Sydney Morning Herald and The Herald in Melbourne, which were collected in the books Images in Aspic (1965) and The World of Charmian Clift (1970).
Clift passed away in Sydney in 1969, aged 45.
GEORGE HENRY JOHNSTON OBE (20 July 1912 - 22 July 1970) was an Australian journalist, war correspondent and novelist, best known his trilogy of semi-autobiographical novels: My Brother Jack (1964), Clean Straw for Nothing (1969) and A Cartload of Clay (1971).
Born in Melbourne, he took up an apprenticeship as a lithographer before becoming a journalist for the Melbourne Argus newspaper, serving as a correspondent during World War II. With his second wife, Charmian Clift, he was posted to London as a European correspondent.
Johnston abandoned his journalism career in 1954 when he and Clift moved to the Greek island of Hydra, where he began writing full-time and took part in the island's circle of international artists, including Canadian poet Leonard Cohen. While there he contracted tuberculosis and returned to live in Sydney in 1964. He was appointed an Officer of the Order of the British Empire (OBE) in 1970 for services to literature. He passed away later that year, aged 58.
