The only downside to this book is that visitor-crammed Lindos is likely to become even more so

Much of the time, foreign travel like taking a shower - you climb in, you're sprinkled in the local culture for a brief period, it feels renewing, then you dry yourself off, put your usual clothes back on, and the experience is over. This Way to Paradise is like a long warm bath in Greek culture. Every sentence is soaked in the deep insights that only fully participating in a culture day after day can bring.

Despite a somewhat cumbersome title drawn from a Rhodian bar-hawker's cry, this is an easy read, a warts-and-all revelation of what life has been like on the island of Rhodes since the early nineteen-sixties to the present. Willard Manus and his wife Mavis raised their children, renovated a house, made a living selling directory listings to Greek businessmen, observed the ups and downs of friends and their relationships, spearfished for dinner, survived the sex- and drug drenched-late sixties, and lived to tell the tales. Sometimes that was genuinely in doubt - there's a harrowing account of a friend's near-demise at the hands of the Greek medical system of the time.

The author is best known for his novel, Mott The Hoople, which provided the name for the popular music group.