The Colossus Of Maroussi (2025 Pomelo Book Of The Year)
[A] paean to Greece drawn out of a nine-month visit . . . the gestation time for a human and, in Miller’s case, for the imaginative recreation of a country.
About The Colossus of Maroussi, Pomelo’s 2025 book of the year:
First published in 1941, this impressionist travelogue by Henry Miller details his 9 months stay in pre-WWll Greece in 1939-1940. Critics often consider this his best book. Of his trip Miller said, “the light of Greece opened my eyes, penetrated my pores, expanded my whole being.”(p.210).
Miller is one of my favorite American writers. The way in which he sees the world is on full display here. He elevates the ordinary into something sublime. To Miller, everything Greek seems holy... “In Greece one has the desire to bathe in the sky. You want to rid yourself of your clothes, take a running leap and vault into the blue. You want to float in the air like an angel or lie in the grass rigid and enjoy a cataleptic trance. Stone and sky, they marry here. It is the perpetual dawn of man’s awakening.”(p.138)
That said, this work can ramble on, and it might take some time to get used to his solipsism. In the introduction, Will Self puts it this way: “Miller is confident you will be as interested in his bowel movements as you are the state of his clothes, or the emptiness of his wallet; he mixes then matches the sublime with the ridiculous.” I sent a copy to my friend Woody and asked him for his review before sending a copy to you all. A month later he text me saying “I loved so much of what he said. I also despised his nonstop writing style. [It was] one of the hardest books to pick up but ended up being very difficult to put down once I got into his way of being.”
-Chris, Founder Pomelo Travel