A new edition of a classic originally published in 1964, this is a journal of love, romance, and discord in 1950s postwar Germany. As Welsh artist and poet Elizabeth Greatorex travels with her French husband to meet her former lover Klaus, a German count, she maps a snow-bound landscape of desire against the hardening borders of a newly divided Germany. In her revealing diary, she records her struggle to bridge the distance between Wales and Germany while considering her own mythologized past and real, diminished present. This fascinating story pits creative idealism, emotional hunger, and sexual longing against the brutal displacements of postwar Europe.

Never before published and written in three weeks in the autumn of 1967 after two visits to the Greek detention island of Leros, "The Protagonists "is Brenda Chamberlain's response--both heartbreakingly lyrical and disturbingly visceral--to the right-wing coup d'etat of April 1967. A dangerous, dissident text that draws on the conventions of absurdist theater, the play can be viewed as the dark culmination of Chamberlain's profound, career-long exploration of individuality, belonging, incarceration, imaginative freedom and the social role of the artist. It is also a startlingly candid articulation of her own emotional and psychological "internment" at the time. This edition includes a wealth of additional material, including Chamberlain's own sketches, photographs of the play in performance, an interview with the lead actor, a contemporary review of the play's performance, and an in-depth essay contextualizing Chamberlain's literary techniques and influences.

"A Rope of Vines Journal from a Greek Island" is a beautiful and personal account of the time spent by Brenda Chamberlain on the Greek Island of Ydra in the early 1960's. Sea and harbour, mountain and monastery, her neighbours and friends are unforgettably pictured; these were the reality outside herself while within there was a conflict of emotion and warring desires. Joy and woe are woven fine in this record: the delight of a multitude of fresh experiences thronging to the senses, the suffering from which she emerges with new understanding of herself and human existence. Both in the intensity and force of the writing and the eloquent island drawings, "A Rope of Vines Journal from a Greek Island" is a distinguished achievement.