"The Colossus of Maroussi" remains one of the most captivating texts ever written about modern Greece. Captivating because it describes a Greece that is enchanting in its solitude, like a small piece of eternity that has reached our shallow time. This Greece may no longer exist. However, by reading "The Colossus," you feel like you carry it in the cells of your soul.
(Takis Theodoropoulos, newspaper "Ta Nea", 13-14/11/2004)
Henry Miller, who was living in Paris at the time, disregarding the bad omens - when the messages of World War II were being erased on the horizon - decides to come to Greece in 1939, having secured the hospitality of the English writer Lawrence Durrell, who was living in Corfu. Initially, he moved without a plan, going here and there. He will be impressed by his encounters with Katsimbalis, Seferis, Antoniou, Hatzikyriakos-Gikas, and Tsatsos, and because of them, he will extend his stay. He will leave Greece under pressure from the American embassy, which wanted its citizens to leave the country due to the war that had already begun.
His impressions from his journey will take the title "The Colossus of Maroussi" and constitute a peculiar exploration of Greek human geography.
The book also includes the notes that Henry Miller left to George Seferis before leaving Greece, which are titled "First Impressions of Greece," and in the past had been published in a separate book (pub. Nefeli).