Sponge Divers

(Paperback)

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Description

For some 3000 years, the ships on the Greek island of Kalymnos have put out to sea. In recent generations the men have been sponge divers, but then a chemist learned to make a synthetic sponge. A way of life is ending. This is the story of people facing this break in the life of the island.

Author Bio

George Johnston started his career in journalism with the Melbourne Argus when he was just sixteen. After his work as a correspondent during World War II Johnston began to focus on literature when he moved to the Greek islands with his second wife Charmian Clift. It was the strength of his honesty about humanity and relationships that earned him his place in Australias literary canon. Johnston in 1970 after a long battle with tuberculosis, but his enduring myth and greatness lives on through two semi-autobiographical works for which he was awarded the Miles Franklin Award in 1964 for My Brother Jack and in 1969 for Clean Straw for Nothing. Charmian Clift was born in Kiama, New South Wales, in 1923. She became a journalist on the Melbourne Argus newspaper after the war, and in 1947 married novelist and journalist George Johnston. Early in their marriage they collaborated on three novels, then, in 1954, they took their family to live in the Greek Islands. There, Clift wrote these accounts of her life and two novels, Honours Mimic and Walk to the Paradise Gardens. On returning to Australia in 1964, Clift began writing a weekly newspaper column which quickly gained a wide and devoted readership. She died in 1969.