We’ve been reading Sally Jane Smith’s travel memoir, Repacking for Greece this month in our online book club Traveling Europe Through Books! Sally is a South African travel writer, currently based in Australia. She has a special passion for the Greek Islands. Her scintillating descriptions, thorough knowledge of Greek history and culture, and good humour shine through in her writing. We are so grateful to Sally for this guest blog below:

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Literary Wanderlust in Greece

by Sally Jane Smith

Pairing books with places is one of my favourite travel activities.

For those of us who enjoy armchair travel almost as much as the real thing, reading while actually on location engages our minds in new and exciting ways. The crossover between observation and imagination can be so powerful that we feel transported into the pages. And there is nowhere quite like Greece for encountering a landscape layered with story upon story: from Aesop’s fables to Bronze Age mythology, from Lord Byron’s poetry to contemporary novels translated into English, from tourist narratives to chronicles of the Greek diaspora.

In 2016 and 2017, these tales became my companions as I explored fifteen unforgettable Greek destinations: Athens, Delphi and Meteora on the mainland; Monemvasia, Sparta, Nafplio, Mycenae, Epidavros and Methana on the Peloponnese Peninsula; and the islands of Santorini, Rhodes, Hydra, Poros, Kefalonia and Corfu. These were significant journeys for me, transforming me from reader, to traveller, to writer, and leading to the publication of my series, Unpacking for Greece and Repacking for Greece.

Each night of my travels, I’d savour the books that gave me a taste of Greece. Then, by day, I’d encounter sights, sounds and smells that made the stories come alive. I tried to capture these sensations in words when reading Captain Corelli’s Mandolin, by Louis de Bernières, on Kefalonia:

“Instead of simply picturing the scene in my mind’s eye, I could feel it. I knew the breeze that ruffled the water of the bay on one side of the bridge, but merely rippled the surface of the lagoon on the other. I heard my footsteps on the paving, felt my body turn as I moved from one zigzag angle to the next, saw how a combat vehicle would dominate the narrow walkway, leaving room for no one in its path.”

Repacking for Greece by Sally Jane Smith, pages 148-149

It was on Crete in 2023, though, that my literary wanderlust came into its own. This wasn’t entirely accidental. For my third Greek odyssey, I structured my itinerary to take in both Knossos – the archaeological site associated with the ancient legend of the Minotaur’s labyrinth – and Spinalonga – the twentieth-century leper colony that inspired Victoria Hislop’s bestselling The Island.

The forbidding tunnel described in Hislop’s book led me into an abandoned but surprisingly cheerful settlement, overgrown with flowers, where I wandered for hours. Most striking was the moment I stepped past a rusting disinfection kiln to an archway that pierced the village walls. I found myself looking down a short boat ramp and over the narrow waters that separate Spinalonga, a tiny islet, from the Cretan landmass. That’s when it hit me: Maria, one of The Island’s protagonists, could have seen her family move about their hometown on the opposite shore – but only if she had been allowed through the gate to stand where I stood.

Bookish reference points enriched my experience of Crete wherever I went. My search for the grave of Nikos Kazantzakis, who wrote the brilliant but troubling Zorba the Greek, took me to the sun-soaked summit of Heraklion’s old city walls. A chance Instagram comment from author Linda Lappin sent me to a little village called Mochlos, on a sweaty expedition that ended with a cold beer in a waterside taverna. But the literary lesson that stayed with me was the one that told me why I couldn’t get where I wanted to go.

In the months before my trip, I had sought out reads with a Cretan connection. Memoirs from soldiers and resistance fighters like George Psychoundakis and Patrick Leigh Fermor introduced me to the island’s brutal World War Two occupation. But, as so often happens, it was a cast of fictional characters that brought the emotional reality of these historic events home to me.

The setting of Kate Forsyth’s The Crimson Thread feels more like a protagonist than a passive landscape, and I really should have taken note of the role played by the towering White Mountains that bisect Crete. If I had, I wouldn’t have so blithely booked accommodation in Agios Nikolaus for one night, and in Loutro for the next. Because of course public transportation routes don’t go directly from A to B, but skirt the mountain range instead. Which meant the bus wouldn’t get me to Crete’s southern shore in time for the last ferry to Loutro. Not on that off-season April day, anyway.

It was a facepalm moment that cost me a night’s hotel fees, and one of many reasons I keep seeking out destination-specific stories.

Here are my two go-to resources:

TripFiction

TripFiction is a great tool for picking out the perfect paperback travel companion. Not only do they have a database of thousands of novels, travelogues and memoirs that you can search by setting, but they also support an online community of like-minded people: those who love linking literature with location.

There are reviews and lists, competitions and giveaways, but, most of all, there is a profound love of travel-by-book.

Over the last seven years or so, my relationship with TripFiction has deepened. The first guest blog I ever wrote – a piece about turning to a favourite series for comfort on a grief-ridden journey through Türkiye – was published under their banner. A strange coincidence led us later to become partners in an international book club hosted by JourneyWoman. The joy of TripFiction, though, is that they have been the catalyst for fascinating detours I’ve taken on my trips, including two special places in Crete I may never have visited without the serendipitous arrival of their email newsletter at exactly the right time.

Strong Sense of Place

The first time I listened to Strong Sense of Place, I knew I’d found my reading family. You know that feeling when you stumble across a podcast and it feels as if it was broadcast just for you? And by “you” I mean, potentially, every reader who loves travelling by book, and every traveller who enjoys nothing more than turning a journey into a literary adventure.

In each episode, Mel and Dave review a selection of stories set in a featured destination. They transcend the basics of audio-travel, communicating insights into culture and history, and encouraging mindful exploration that considers our impact on the countries we visit. After all, as they say on their website: “Reading good books increases empathy. Empathy is good for all of us and the amazing world we inhabit.”

In case podcasts aren’t your thing, they also have a newsletter. It is a feast of treats that surprises my literary tastebuds every time they serve it up to my inbox – sometimes the most seemingly random tidbits are the most mouthwatering, and I can’t wait to discover what they come up with next.

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• The ‘Packing for Greece’ series is available wherever you buy books, including Amazon at https://mybook.to/Greece
• Free newsletter sign-up for travel reads, destination games and more at http://www.sallyjanesmith.com/newsletter
• For a list of books I read in Greece, see http://www.sallyjanesmith.com/sally-reads
• Connect on social media at http://www.instagram.com/JourneysInPages or http://www.facebook.com/JourneysInPages

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