The Art of Exile: A Vagabond Life

by John Freely

Overview

By the time he was six, John Freely had crossed the Atlantic four times. His childhood was spent on the mean streets of 1930s Brooklyn, where he scavenged for junk to sell and borrowed money for books; his first love being Homer's Odyssey. He was 15 when Japan attacked Pearl Harbor and 17 when he enlisted in the US Navy and embarked on the first great adventure of his life: joining a clandestine unit that helped the Kuomintang fight the Japanese. He served for two years, 96 days in combat and a total of 344 days overseas, which sparked a lifelong passion for travel. Returning home after the war, Freely fell in love with a beautiful girl who sang the blues. His own Penelope. Together they signed a blood pact to spend their life travelling the world. This unforgettable memoir takes the reader from the streets of New York to the corridors of provincial campus life; from World War II in the Pacific to the shores of the Bosphorus and from Ancient Troy to the isles of Dionysus and Ariadne. It is the story of a remarkable odyssey that has spanned nine decades, several continents and one great love.And still the odyssey continues, "as I ponder the meaning of an Ithaka and of exile as an art that takes a lifetime to master.
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Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780857729873
Publisher:	Bloomsbury Publishing
Publication date:	04/29/2016
Sold by:	Barnes & Noble
Format:	eBook
Pages:	256
File size:	1 MB

About the Author

John Freely(1926-2017) was born in 1926 in Brooklyn. In 1944, at the age of 17, he enlisted in the US Navy and spent the last two years of World War II serving with a commando unit in Burma and China. In 1960 John and his family moved to Istanbul, where he taught physics and the history of science at Bo?azici University. Aside from his travels across the world, he has lived there ever since. He is the author of over 40 acclaimed travel and history books, including Strolling through Istanbul, The Western Shores of Turkey, Strolling through Venice, Inside the Seraglio, Children of Achilles, Light from the East, Celestial Revolutionary and The Grand Turk (all I.B.Tauris Publishers).
John Freely (1926-2017) was born in New York and joined the US Navy at the age of seventeen, serving with a commando unit in Burma and China during the last years of World War II. He has lived in New York, Boston, London, Athens and Istanbul and has written over thirty travel books and guides, most of them about Greece and Turkey.

Table of Contents

List of Illustrations viii

Acknowledgements ix

Introduction 1

1 Twenty Years Agrowing 3

2 Blood Pact 61

3 The Odyssey Begins 81

4 Around the Eastern Mediterranean 103

5 Lotus Eating 123

6 Beyond the Pillars of Hercules 141

7 The Odyssey Changes Course 161

8 The Odyssey Interrupted 177

9 The Odyssey Resumed 193

10 The Odyssey Continues 211

Editorial Reviews

‘An outstandingly interesting and well-written autobiography’

Robert Carver