Samson is an intensely sensual writer, conjuring up blue skies, the tang of wild herbs, the vivid splash of bougainvillea ... As good as a Greek holiday, and may be the closest we get this year

Financial Times

As dreamily nostalgic as Cohen's song Famous Blue Raincoat

Alex Preston, Observer, New Year Highlights

Sleazy, evocative, beautiful and entertaining

Stuart Turton, Guardian Summer Reading Picks

A thoroughly enjoyable drama of hedonism, enchantment and emotional beastliness

Times Literary Supplement

Spellbinding … An immersive read, steeped in nostalgia. Samson's poetic prose is so evocative that, by the end, you find yourself googling those entrancing images of Hydra, 1960, just to wallow further in the poignancy of it all

Vanity Fair

The novel has a lightly worn heft to it, as it probes freedom and creativity … By the end of this enjoyable novel, which makes vivid an interesting moment and place, you discover people have paid a price – a heavy one – for that freedom in the sun

The Times