The Station

Resumen del libro

Mount Athos, the spiritual heart of Eastern Orthodox Monasticism, is perhaps the most sacred and mysterious place in Greece: an autonomous state, where no woman can set foot, which has its own calendar and its own time. This ruggedly beautiful peninsula in Macedonia boasts a history that stretches back to Herodotus and has been a sanctuary from the earliest days of Christianity, through the Byzantine and Ottoman eras, two world wars and up to the present day. In 1927, at the age of 22, Robert Byron journeyed to Athos with his friends and embarked on an adventure whose influence would remain with him for the rest of his life. Through compelling descriptions of the monks of Athos, their daily lives and the treasures held in their monasteries, Byron illuminates an ancient and enigmatic world, long shrouded from the eyes of outsiders. Published nine years before his classic The Road to Oxiana, The Station reveals the roots of a fascination with the Byzantine world that would become refined in Byron's later writings and establish him as one of the pre-eminent writers of his generation.

Biografía del autor

El nombre de Robert Byron (1905-1941) debe escribirse con mayúsculas. Uno de uno de los grandes viajeros del siglo xx, autor de algunos de los libros de viajes más influyentes y atractivos que se hayan escrito. The Station señaló el camino de la Grecia rural y monástica a Sir Patrick Leigh Fermor; Viaje a Oxiana nunca faltó en el equipaje de Bruce Chatwin. Educado en Eton y Oxford, pronto abandonó la alta sociedad británica para empezar a deambular por los tortuosos caminos de la Europa de entreguerras y el convulso Oriente Próximo de los años treinta. Nunca paró. Un submarino alemán torpedeó el carguero en el que viajaba hacia Oriente Medio en febrero del 41. Sólo así la barbarie lo pudo detener.