In the Beginning »

1927. English novelist and travel writer. He lived for years on the island of Capri and in Italy and other Mediterranean countries, and he made these the settings for his books. The book begins: Along that broad and languid stream were few human habitations; only a fisherman's hut here and there on some sandy reach, with a black tub, his boat, drawn up on the shore or tethered to stakes in the gray-green water. At no great distance inland stood a collection of reed-cabins plastered together with dried mud and bitumen: a village.