Attention all armchair travellers, please sit back , relax and allow Kathryn Gauci to take you on a wonderful tour of picturesque Greece.
The author, having previously lived and worked in Greece, returns for a nostalgic tour of familiar locations as well as some new ones.
An exceptionally well written memoir with a selection of mouth watering recipes included.
An Aegean Odyssey: A Memoir
(Editorial Review)
“I’ve read quite a few Greek memoirs, but this has to be one of the best. The author’s ability to transport us to a Greece few travelers know is rich with detail and humour. Whether it is the landscape, the history, food, or the plethora of colourful people she meets, I felt I was there with her. A captivating and entertaining read that I recommend to all lovers of Greece.”
Barbara Gaskell Denvil, author of the Historical Mysteries Collection
(Editorial Review)
“Greece presents itself as a country that intertwines the past with the present: its people living modern lives against a centuries-old historical, cultural and geographical backdrop. Kathryn Gauci’s book cleverly merges the fascinating history of this country with her own autobiographical memoir as she retraces her steps and recounts her time living in this colourful and flavourful country. Her passion for history is evident throughout the book as she skillfully weaves together historical facts and significant events with plate after plate of delicious local food. Beware—her wonderful descriptions of the many meals she enjoyed will leave your mouth watering! I was left wanting to buy a ticket to this charming and fascinating country and retrace her footsteps. Highly recommended.”
Alyson Sheldrake, author and artist.
Diatribe: Aegean Light – Kathryn Gauci’s ‘An Aegean Odyssey’
https://seegreece.substack.com/p/armchair-travel?r=6nj50…
Armchair Travel
Take An Aegean Odyssey without leaving home
I just finished reading a book about travels in Greece, which I enjoyed so much I wanted to share it, though you can read a full review on our website: An Aegean Odyssey. Writing so much about Greece always makes us want to be back there, but the next best thing is reading about it, especially a book by an accomplished writer.
And the author, Kathryn Gauci, is certainly that. She’s written a number of historical novels, many of them set in Greece, and has won various awards for them. I’m not surprised. An Aegean Odyssey is beautifully written, and you can read a few samples of the writing in my review, where you can also read the story behind the writing of the book, which adds to the interest.
SEEGREECESUBSTACK.COM – Armchair Travel
Mike has already written a lengthy, in-depth review, which I posted ealier, so I am thrilled that he has chosen to mention it again in their newsletter.
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“I just finished reading a book about travels in Greece, which I enjoyed so much I wanted to share it, though you can read a full review on our website: An Aegean Odyssey. Writing so much about Greece always makes us want to be back there, but the next best thing is reading about it, especially a book by an accomplished writer.
And the author, Kathryn Gauci, is certainly that. She’s written a number of historical novels, many of them set in Greece, and has won various awards for them. I’m not surprised. An Aegean Odyssey is beautifully written, and you can read a few samples of the writing in my review, where you can also read the story behind the writing of the book, which adds to the interest.”
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Baklava and Banter Interview: Youtube.
WENDY RIDOLINI:
AUTHOR CHAT! Kathryn Gauci: Author shares her writing journey with me and tips on how to write a memoir which gets 5-star reviews! She says, “A memoir needs highs and lows to create a compelling narrative arc that engages the reader emotionally and shows personal evolution”
Full interview on YouTube
Sandy
Reviewed in Australia on 10 December 2025
Cole Horsfall
Reviewed in Australia on 18 November 2025
Format: Kindle Verified Purchase
Abzorba the Greek
Reviewed in the United Kingdom on 28 October 2025
AEGEAN LIGHT: KATHRYN GAUCI’S AN AEGEAN ODYSSEY
Among those Philhellenes who have transformed admiration for Greece into a lasting artistic vocation, Kathryn Gauci holds a distinct and enduring place. An Aegean Odyssey stands as a confession of faith, an elegy of return, and a meditation on artistic rebirth. Through it, Gauci continues the lineage of English-language writers who discovered in Greece the mirror of their own transformation, while offering a vision that is deeply humane and freed from the illusions of spectacle. Her gaze is clear, her affection untheatrical, her attention unwavering.
Born in Leicestershire and long resident in Melbourne, Gauci studied textile design at Loughborough and Kidderminster before moving to Athens, where she worked as a carpet designer for six years. Those years, she recalls, “were among the happiest of my life.” In her youth she absorbed the colour and rhythm of the Greek world, and those impressions became the warp of her creative identity. Decades later she relinquished her prosperous design studio to pursue writing, an act of faith recorded in the Foreword as “a plunge into the unknown.” Through that act she sought to reconcile her craft of texture and colour with the new vocation of language. From that decision emerged An Aegean Odyssey.
The book unfolds as a series of returns. It begins in Athens and moves through Chios, Lesvos, Rhodes, Karpathos and Crete. Each place becomes an intimate space of recognition, the geography of memory reawakened. In Athens she walks through the neighbourhoods of her youth and perceives how the pulse of the city survives through its people, shaped by displacement yet sustained by dignity. In Chios she contemplates the patient labour of the mastic harvesters. In Lesvos she listens to the song of its poets and musicians. In Crete she confronts the grandeur of landscape and myth, and her odyssey concludes with serenity. The progression of the book resembles a woven design, each island a motif, each encounter a strand of continuity between the past and the present.
Gauci’s prose bears the refinement of her first vocation. Every scene is described through pattern, hue and sensation: the gleam of marble, the scent of herbs, the worn weave of a fisherman’s net. She writes with the assurance of one who has spent a lifetime observing texture. The artistry of her sentences is tactile, each phrase carrying the quiet authority of a hand accustomed to material. Her landscapes possess an interior dimension, for the human figure is always central to her vision. When she describes a village feast, she observes the hands that pass the bread, the laughter that binds strangers, the movement of generosity within daily life.
The narrative reveals a continuing dialogue between art and life. Gauci’s transformation from designer to writer is the book’s underlying theme. The act of travel becomes a passage through artistic evolution. The language of colour that once informed her textiles becomes the language of emotion and rhythm in prose. Through this metamorphosis she affirms that creativity is a single continuum expressed through changing forms. Her artistic self, far from being discarded, is absorbed into her new vocation. The threads of design reappear as sentences of texture and cadence.
From the first pages, memory functions as both subject and structure. The epigraph declares: “We can never shake ourselves free of what once was, for the past comes with us like our shadow.” That principle animates the entire work. Each island visit awakens recollections that flow into reflection, creating a palimpsest of time. Memory is not a nostalgic retreat but a living current through which the present gains density and meaning. Gauci treats recollection as an act of continuity, the means by which identity preserves coherence amid change.
The ethical power of her memoir lies in its restraint. Where earlier generations of travellers often sought to impose meaning upon Greece, Gauci allows Greece to reveal itself. Her perception is grounded in intimacy rather than distance. The Greeks she encounters are individuals, not representatives of an imagined essence. The voice of the observer merges with the voices of those she meets. This equilibrium between self and other lends her work moral clarity.
In her Foreword she confides that the journey arose from a desire to follow her heart “wherever it may take you.” That sincerity permeates the book. The hospitality she receives becomes a metaphor for the openness of her method. She enters the world of her hosts with humility, allowing their customs, speech and rhythms to shape her perception. The result is an account free of the distortions that once characterised travel writing about the Mediterranean. Her Greece is lived, not observed from a distance.
This sensitivity gives her work significance beyond literature. Edward Said’s reflections on the Western construction of the Orient remind us how easily the gaze of the traveller can turn possessive. Gauci’s narrative offers the opposite tendency: a literature of reciprocity. Her writing exemplifies what Homi Bhabha has termed a “space of translation,” in which identity is negotiated through exchange rather than hierarchy. The relationship between visitor and host becomes a shared act of interpretation. Through this ethical stance, Gauci contributes to a more mature phase of Philhellenism, one that affirms equality rather than idealisation.
Her work also offers a distinctly feminine voice within a genre historically dominated by male adventurers. She situates herself within domestic and communal spaces: markets, kitchens, courtyards, ferry decks. The knowledge she acquires comes through conversation, taste and touch. In these scenes she restores to travel writing the dimension of care. The Greek women who welcome her, teach her recipes and share stories of endurance become her teachers. Through them, she enters a tradition of feminine observation that transforms the ordinary into revelation.
Throughout the narrative, the Aegean itself functions as a metaphor of unity. The sea links islands, memory and imagination. It serves as the visual and moral centre of the work, a symbol of continuity that embraces movement rather than permanence. Gauci’s sentences echo the rhythm of waves; her reflections on change and endurance mirror the tides. The sea becomes an emblem of identity that adapts without losing form, a vision deeply consonant with the experience of the diaspora and the porous boundaries of modern Hellenism.
The closing chapters embody reconciliation. In Crete she writes: “When I started out on this journey, I wasn’t really sure what I was looking for. I followed my heart and learned to let go – to surrender, and in the end to feel as free as the majestic vultures that fly over Milia.” Later she adds, “The relationship with yourself is one of the most important relationships in your life and I rediscovered it on this trip.” These words articulate the moral centre of the memoir. The voyage is a restoration of balance between discipline and freedom, solitude and belonging, art and life.
The book concludes with a series of traditional recipes, a gesture that may appear simple yet completes the circle of experience. The act of recording taste and fragrance joins the intellectual to the sensual, the transient to the enduring. Food becomes a language of memory and continuity. In those closing pages Gauci affirms that culture survives through the rituals of daily generosity.
Within the broader tradition of Anglo writing on Greece, An Aegean Odyssey marks a turning point. Byron celebrated Greece as the theatre of liberty, Durrell as the paradise of sensual beauty, Leigh Fermor as the arena of heroic endurance. Gauci’s Greece belongs to the heart’s interior geography, a place of hospitality, resilience and rebirth. The grandeur of her vision lies in its composure. She does not seek to conquer experience, she enters it with gratitude.
In Melbourne, where she has lived for many years, Gauci has become a beloved presence among those who cherish Greece. Her fiction and memoirs have contributed to the cultural conversation of the Greek diaspora. She stands as a reminder that love of Greece transcends origin, that Hellenism is a moral and aesthetic inheritance available to all who approach it with reverence.
The serenity of An Aegean Odyssey conceals its quiet profundity. Each page invites the reader to dwell in attention. Gauci restores to travel the dignity of listening. Through patience and humility she discovers revelation in the ordinary and grace in the familiar. The Aegean that emerges from her pages is not a stage for legend but a living presence whose rhythm endures through those who honour it.
Kathryn Gauci’s An Aegean Odyssey is therefore both memoir and offering; a tribute to the land that shaped her and to the community that has embraced her. The reader senses throughout a truth born of experience: that the love of Greece, when expressed through gratitude and fidelity, becomes an art of living.
DEAN KALIMNIOU
Helen Johnson Brumbaugh
Reviewed in the United States on September 24, 2025
Format: Kindle
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Warning: ‘An Aegean Odyssey’ by Kathryn Gauci may cause excessive relaxation, spontaneous mental Greek island hopping, and an irreversible love for Greek culture. Kathryn’s writing is like a warm breeze on a Greek island—soothing, immersive, and utterly captivating.It’s a history book. A travel journal. A cultural record. It’s not a quick read—more like its namesake by Homer.I read the e-book, but now I’ve ordered the paperback. I need to read, re-read, and mark stuff up with a pen. Like the word philotimo.If you love Greece, you’ll love this book. It’s a living, breathing map of the Aegean soul. I’m obsessed, Kathryn, thank you.
Sharon B.Reviewed in the United States on October 18, 2025
Format: Kindle
Rebecca HA delightful and insightful memoir.
Reviewed in the United Kingdom on 15 November 2025
Format: KindleVerified PurchaseGoodreadsAn Aegean Odyssey: A Memoir
by
Literary Redhead‘s review
Sep 24, 2025A gorgeous memoir by the talented histfic author and former carpet and textile designer of her travels and life in the Greek islands. A lush look at the glorious food, sites, history, culture, and people. Wow!
5.0 out of 5 stars A sunny sabbatical back to old-style Greece
Reviewed in the United Kingdom on 3 November 2025
This is a lovely memoir for lifelong Grecophiles and those newer travellers who wonder what the country was really like before mass tourism bevelled the edges off its old and unpredictable charm.
5.0 out of 5 stars Wow! How do you review a memoir as beautiful, as dense and wonderful as this?
Reviewed in the United Kingdom on October 13, 2025
Although I also, in years of travelling in Greece, have visited almost all the places featuring in Aegean Odyssey, Gauci with her unique and single minded approach gave me further poignant insights into places I thought I knew well and this book taught me so much.
The author ‘prone to unpredictability’ made the decision in 2005 to travel back to Greece where she had lived and worked early in her career and to travel solo (with an oversized backpack) which provided a unique perspective on her travels. When after several weeks of solo travel her husband joined her at the end of her odyssey she realised that the solo experience had been precious, that all she had seen and done had been a rare opportunity to see things differently, to experience isolation, historical interest and traditional culture all overlaid with the scent of Rochas Byzance.
Later she would also make the decision to consider quitting her work as a carpet designer in Australia, which had been her career in Greece and turn her talents to that of author.
Much had changed when the author revisited Athens and much had stayed the same. But the big difference was during the first visit during the seventies Gauci was living there at the time of Junta. On her revisit packed fascinating detail, her memoir was to remind me of many odd instances of our own travel experiences, the magical influence of a unique city still dominated the Acropolis, of some citizens still traumatised by the Asia Minor tragedy, by the occupation of the Nazis and civil war, but as bizarre as the brothels innocently posing as hotels in the seventies, which had once caught us out on a family holiday and of the unforgettable intoxicating perfume of gardenias and jasmine!
But this chapter, as are all the chapters, is also charged with food recollections and historical references layering this memoir up to its climax as a great book.
In Chios she was fortunate to meet the hotel owner, Theodore Spordilis, who sets her off on the right path to the explore this complex and diverse island from barrel organs to the products of unique and magical Mastic trees and the accomplished street signs. She learns the skill of collecting Mastika pearls of resin from the ancient trees and the diversity of each of the many Mastic villages, the Middle Ages maze which is the walled village of Mesta and the sgrafitto black and white decoration of Pyrgi, one of the most illuminating chapters in a book packed with extraordinary details.
Among historical references are those that include the Genoese notables such as the Argenti family, the Turks who certainly didn’t cover themselves in glory and one of the worst of the atrocities committed by the Ottomans was that at one of the three great Byzantine monasteries of Greece at Nea Moni, an UNESCO site.
In Lesbos Greece’s third largest island she travels from the elegant capital of Mytilene where mosques and hammans are found within its narrow Turkish streets intermingling with modern influences. Moving south east to the town of Plomari where the ouzo is made and visiting the distillery of Barbayannis gives Gauci a chance to savour one of the best ouzos and to reflect on its unique creation. Then west to hippy Eresos, home of the classical Greek poet and yes there are many female couples, mostly naked on the beaches, although there is no evidence that Sappho was a lesbian. Nearby the ancient petrified forests is a must for a for a visitor, utterly remarkable.
And on to historic Mithymna, coastal but also a picturesque hillside settlement. In the end it is the genuine Greekness of the island that overwhelms the author.
Forced to stop in Rhodes she finds it’s not all about tourism and rescued from diabolical accommodation by a charming couple she shares a performance of traditional dances and in the following days visits to neo-classical island of Symi and Lindos, but spoiled by over tourism, then she finds in the upland centre of the island echoes the ‘real Greece’ (just as we did many many years ago!)
Karpathos is more to the author’s taste, finding small villages and beautiful unspoiled beaches but the jewel of the mountains is the traditional village of Olymbos with its blue and white houses, their unique decorated balconies and the two surviving milling windmills – and amazing seaviews.
In Crete she was lucky to find tiny historic Mochlos, in the east but she threw a new perspective on the fearsome Cretans and their culture of survival against all the invaders not least those who perpetuated such horrors in WW2. After spending many years exploring Crete and moving on to other areas and Greece this impressive book has reminded me what a remarkable area of Europe the island of Crete is, historically and topographically.
I feel privileged to have read this great memoir and to have shared in Kathryn Gauci’s experiences.