Recommendations for books about Crete.

April 26, 2009 2:43 AM

Can anyone recommend books about the island of Crete, please? I'm particularly interested in the history and culture of the island, but also want to learn about its flora, fauna, geology, etc.
posted by kitfreeman to Travel & Transportation around Crete, Greece (5 answers total)

Not a book, but a great article from the Economist's Intelligent Life magazine here.
posted by mdonley at 2:47 AM on April 26, 2009

Crete by John Freely is a good guide (concentrating on scholarly/historical stuff).

The Villa Ariadne by Dilys Powell is (in the words of an Amazon review) "a brilliant and somewhat off-beat look at the decades of classicists who stayed at Sir Arthur Evans' house, Villa Ariadne, in Crete, next to the Bronze Age dig Knossos."

For a novelistic treatment, there's Zorba the Greek by Nikos Kazantzakis.
posted by languagehat at 5:51 AM on April 26, 2009 [2 favorites]

Perhaps you've seen it already, but there was a nice front page post a while back about the resistance efforts on Crete during World War II.
posted by kurtroehl at 8:14 AM on April 26, 2009

How about fiction? Not really what you're asking, but I can't resist recommending Mary Renault's The King Must Die, one of my favorite books. In my defense, it does cover the mythology/history of the island.
posted by nax at 3:01 PM on April 26, 2009

Another excellent novel by Nikos Kazantzakis with more of a historical focus is Captain Michalis/Freedom or Death.
posted by hydrophonic at 11:18 PM on April 26, 2009