The flying island

"The Flying Island is an account of an Italian woman's solitary stay on the Azores. The islanders are poised between their open generosity and simplicity, their traditions bordering on the magic and the supernatural; and the brute realism of the new American culture imported with returning workers who increasingly view the Azores not as home but as holiday destination. Romana Petri gives us an unsentimental account of a way of living, a view of the natural and social world under threat. Her anxious tracing of a fast-encroaching and all-consuming alien culture leads to a work of lyrical fantasy combined with acute social analysis.