HOT NEWS: here is something really new from Lefkada Trails – a novel written by Colin Cooper. If you want to understand the recent history of Alexandros and the mountain villages, here is the novel that will explain.
On sale now on Amazon as a paperback or a Kindle ebook.
“So movingly real and so convincingly speaks the truth for itself and for history. How someone — let alone an Englishman — entered so naturally, deeply and unpretentiously into the psyche of a place and a people is an achievement.” — Christos Pittas, composer, resident of Alexandros, Lefkada.
The novel that explains what you’re walking through
If you have walked the trails into the interior of Lefkada — through the mountain villages, past the sealed houses, along the terraced hillsides returning to scrub — you will have wondered why it looks the way it does. The beaches and harbours of coastal Lefkada are busy and thriving. The mountain interior is half empty. The villages that were once the heart of the island are quiet in a way that feels less like peace than absence.
The View from Skaros is the answer to that question.
Set in Alexandros and Kolyvata — the villages at the foot of Skaros mountain, connected by the high meadow that walkers cross on the Alexandros–Kolyvata trail — the novel covers the years 1935 to 1948. It tells the story of what happened to the people who built those houses, farmed those terraces, and played music in those squares: the wine crisis that broke the farmers, the Italian and German occupations, the resistance in the mountains, and then the civil war that on this island began earlier and cut deeper than anywhere else in Greece.
The path up Skaros is the same path the novel follows — past St George’s Monastery in the forest, up above the treeline to the ruined church on the peak. The abandoned terraces you walk through, the sealed houses in the villages below, the silence of the interior — the novel explains all of it.
It is told through the diary of a fictional girl and her family who witnesses everything. But every event she witnesses is documented, every place she walks is real.
The mountain villages of Lefkada look the way they do for a reason. The walking guide takes you there. The novel tells you why.
If you have enjoyed the novels of Victoria Hislop or Sofka Zinovieff, this novel is for you.
Read more about Alexandros on alexandros.online
Hikes where the novel is set
Walk around Alexandros and Kolyvata passing the village well
The Kolyvata to Skaros Loop the “Milia” walk to the deserted church
Red Church, Skaros, Kolyvata Loop incorporating Penelope’s viewpoint.