Austen Kark found a house in Southern Greece and, against everyone's advice, bought it. It was an old house of which the outside walls were built of stone at the bottom and plastered tree branches and rubble at the top. It was more or less derelict, with hand grenades concealed in its roof, and it fell down altogether before he had signed the purchase agreement. This book is about that house, and is also the story of a love affair with Greece and its people, and the fulfilment of a dream. Kark writes of the joys of sun and sea, and of the way in which the Greeks live and think and respond to strangers; about what it is like for a northern European to live in a town which, in the summer, is a vast outdoor dining room and where everyone's political opinions are not only known but passionately sought and argued.