HOT NEWS: here is something really new from Lefkada Trails – a novel written by Colin Cooper.
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.
Set in Alexandros and Kolyvata — the villages on the plateau behind Skaros mountain — 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.
Told through the diary of Maroula, a fictional girl and her family, where every event she witnesses really happened, every place she walks is still there, revealing the hidden history on the Lefkada mountain villages.
“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.
If you have enjoyed the novels of Victoria Hislop or Sofka Zinovieff, this novel is for you.
On sale now at Fagotto Bookshop in Lefkada Town
- paperback or Kindle ebook on Amazon UK – Amazon DE – Amazon USA – Amazon NL
- paperback from IngramSpark (UK shipping only)
- paperback from Blackwells (Europe-wide shipping)
- paperback from Walmart (US shipping)
- ask ask your local bookshop quoting ISBN 978-1-0666453-0-5 .
Read more about Alexandros on alexandros.online
Hike where Maroula walked
The paths in The View from Skaros are real. You can walk them today.
- The path up Skaros follows the same route as the novel – past St George’s Monastery in the forest, up above the treeline to the ruined church on the peak. The abandoned terraces, sealed houses and deep quiet of the interior are the landscape Maroula walks through.
- Walk around Alexandros and Kolyvata past the village well and through the squares that shaped the story.
- The Kolyvata to Skaros loop traces the “Milia” walk to the deserted church above the forest.
- The Red Church – Skaros – Kolyvata loop takes in Penelope’s viewpoint over the plateau and the sea.