A native son returns to the island of Crete a hundred years after his family emigrates to America and East Africa. The writer builds a villa on a small cove and introduces English tourists to the locals; hilarious incidents and cultural misunderstandings are the order of the day. We meet Telis, the bearded surgeon who has gone native, Lefteris, the mustachioed shepherd who runs the beach taverna where the tourists congregate, Minos, a diminutive reformed pimp who becomes the author's building supervisor. A minister of the Thatcher government falls ill before help comes from an unexpected...

Handsome Emmanuel Makris, a former teenage stowaway put ashore in turn-of-the-century colonial East Africa at thirty is the master of a large fortune and is the most eligible bachelor in the colony. In the small seaside tropical town of Tanga social life revolves around the Africa Hotel. There, an illegal backroom gambling den is to play a decisive role after Emmanuel meets Andrea, the stunning blonde daughter of an impoverished German count and countess. Matters are further complicated with the arrival of a new plantation manager from Depression-struck rural California, with his wife and...