Colin Thubron’s Journey Into Cyprus is nothing short of essential reading for anyone with the slightest interest in the island. Travel writing this may be, but the book does much more than simply traverse the landscape or past landmarks. Fundamentally, Journey Into Cyprus is not just a journey ‘through’ Cyprus, as in the end the reader feels that the experience has provided more exposure than just sightseeing, as if we ourselves have experienced these thoughts first hand.

Colin Thubron’s journey was largely on foot. It was not uninterrupted, but it traversed Cyprus from east to west and north to south. There are occasional road trips, but overall the text itself communicates the slowness of the author’s progress through his attention to illuminating details coupled with observation and reflection. The text even appears to have written rest periods, so delightfully capturing those moments when the author stopped by the roadside to sit on a stone and meditate, reflect, or read, or was assaulted by local custom in a coffee shop.

Like all good travel writing, Journey Into Cyprus constantly communicates a sense of place. The landscape unfolds through succinct observations that paint the view. But, at all times, both the intrusion of the visitor and the residence of the premises remain clear, their relative status undisputed. These are the eyes of foreigners, to be sure, but they are opened at all times by local invitation, information and hospitality.

But there is also history here. The name, Cyprus, derives from a word for copper, the metal whose mining formed the basis of the island’s niche in the classical global economy. Colin Thubron’s description of the copper mines (the relics and the ones that still work) in the Troodos Mountains is fascinating. If the name of the island could have been derived from economic activity, it is in the sphere of religion that Cyprus makes its greatest impression, and those religions are also here within these pages, described in detail and mentioned repeatedly as their meaning is continuous. .

For two thousand years, Cyprus followed the cult of Aphrodite. She, like the island itself, was never satisfied with a single relationship. She regularly passed on to another, with the seemingly inevitable offspring from each encounter living a life of their own, either as a mortal or as a god. And so it has remained with the island itself, where an ancient Greek culture was made modern everywhere by the presence of the Greek language, but in a version that the Cypriots seem to have made completely their own. There was a long flirtation with Rome, which produced palaces and theaters, decorated with mosaics that still adorn the excavated sites on the Paphos coast. A long and continuous marriage with Byzantium generated the continued dominance of the Orthodox Church in the life of the island. There are more than five thousand churches and monasteries and they are an integral part of the culture and politics of southern Cyprus.

The Lusingnan period may not be that well known, but it lasted over three centuries and involved the rule of the French-speaking Knights of St. John. They paused on their way home from the Holy Land after being kicked after the Crusades. They ruled and imposed taxes, but island culture and local tradition continued, almost in their own sphere and according to their own rules, despite their power. A brief Venetian period saw the island exploited for the commercial gain of the city-state. Trade routes had to be secured. And then in 1570, the Ottomans came and stayed for three hundred years, changing the nature of the debate by introducing their own Turkish religion and culture. A brief British period left Cyprus with a second language, English, which to this day allows Colin Thubron and others the illusion that communication and its associated illusion of participation are easy. And now, of course, there is a partition, a Turkish north and a Greek south, the constant howling through the fence mediated by the United Nations for the non-United Nations.

All of this and more is in Colin Thubron’s Journey Into Cyprus. But alongside the roadside reflections and appreciation of the landscape, there’s a real glimpse into a culture born out of history but expressed in this time and place as the author’s journey progresses. There are anecdotes, comic moments, and occasional threats along the way. The only disappointment occurs when, suddenly, the journey comes to an end as the author approaches the eastern end of the peninsula that narrows to the north of the island. But that’s the beauty of traveling. You have to experience it for what it is and when it happens, because in the end it is the next trip that calls. Yet in writing it, Colin Thubron allows all of us the luxury of experiencing it all for ourselves and then the ability to repeat it.