The Haunted Mask (Goosebumps Graphix)

The concept of an island conjures up an image of remoteness. In contrast, Cyprus, the subject of Cypria, was always far from isolated. The third largest island in the Mediterranean, measuring some 140 by 60 miles, Cyprus has been tumbling over itself with human activity since prehistory. Author Alex Christofi has packed the history of the island in an outstanding profile, dexterously combining natural history with politics, warfare, religion and, in his words, a “hybrid essence.”

As the soil rebels against the cultivation of grains or pulses, olives became an early economic option, and the production of wine for five thousand years. Nature treads a path throughout, beautiful descriptions of landscapes and trees. The climate less favorable, and graphically described by the first British High Commissioner who wrote that in the heat and aridity he couldn’t ride his horse as “large pieces of his hoof break off like shortbread.”

The book’s theme is the imprint of successive populations with intermittent conflicts. The Romans, Arabs, Ottomans, Turks and Greeks became dominant over the centuries, before the British, arriving in the 1870s, were the last to take the helm before Cyprus became a republic almost a century later, in 1960.