News from The Village

Book excerpt: A memoir of friendship, history, and longing in a Greek village that “introduces us to a rich cast of writers and ex-pats, shepherds and urbanites” (A.E. Stallings, Pulitzer Prize for Poetry finalist). In his twenties, an American manual laborer and poet found himself living with his beautiful wife in a village in southern Greece. Their first encounter with that country would prove an unrecoverable dream of intimate magic, but through decades of steadfast affection, David Mason grew to a deeper understanding of what it means to be a citizen of one’s own country and a citizen of the world. From a writer praised for his “often intoxicating language” (Kirkus Reviews), News from the Village is a lyrical memoir of Aegean friends, including such figures as Orhan Pamuk, Bruce Chatwin, Katerina Anghelaki-Rooke, Yiorgos Chouliaras, and Patrick Leigh Fermor, each of whom comes fully alive, along with a brilliant cast of lesser-known characters. Fearing he has lost Greece and everything it has meant in his life, Mason goes back again and again to the country he knew as a young man. He encounters Turkey and Greece together in the shadow of 9/11; follows the lives of his friends, whose trials sometimes surpass his own; and brings them all together in the circle of this generous narrative. Ultimately, Mason’s memoir is about what we can hold and what slips away, what sustains us all through our griefs and disappointments. “Mason realizes he must confront shifting politics, village tensions, family tragedy, and history with blood on its hands before he can love Greece as she is rather than as he would have her be. Along the way, he introduces us to a rich cast of writers and ex-pats, shepherds and urbanites—and travels that stretch from the Rockies to the Bosphorus—the journey of a lifetime.”—A.E. Stallings, Pulitzer Prize finalist and author of Like