And that evening, around an iron-fire pit on the terrace overlooking the Caldera, metallic in the moonlight, Issue 21 of Five Dials (online magazine based in London and published by Hamish Hamilton) was launched. Editor Craig Taylor\u00a0asked for a volunteer to “release” the issue. Danae, eight-year old heroine and arguable champion of this festival (see attached photo for her “Fortunes”), was chosen. Craig gave the introduction, then the command: after Danae pressed the button, she asked “what happens now?”, expecting a bang. Even though the magazine is published only as a pdf and the participants had nothing to hold on to and flip through \u2013 no evidence or bangs, as Danae noticed \u2013 the atmosphere was still an exuberant one. It felt like paper lanterns with tea-lights inside were being sent out across the sea.<\/p>\n
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![\"Santorini\"](\"http:\/\/www.herroyalmajesty.ca\/wp-content\/uploads\/2011\/11\/reading.jpg\" "\\"reading\\"")
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Photos by Claire Kelley<\/p>\n<\/div>\n
It was dark by then, but the moon was bright enough for British authors Joe Dunthorne (of Submarine<\/em>) and Ross Sutherland (of Street Fighter Sonnets<\/em>), and Greek authors Dimitris Sotakis, Alexis Stamatis, and Thanassis Heimonas to whet our appetite with stories and poems.<\/p>\nAfter dinner and Raki (local firewater, poured like water from an old Evian bottle) readings got slightly more raucous. Ross performed a final poem, a transposable ode delivered with Shakespearian potency and a northern lilt, to a cross-legged and beaming Craig Walzer. The evening ended in a hot-tub, or so we were told.<\/p>\n
The Sunday night was somewhat mellower affair. We (Rosa and Harriet) read the second half of \u2018The Fall\u2019, our story about a boy called Lendl and a girl called Eurydice, written collaboratively, by passing notebooks across caf\u00e9 tables, over text message, email, and then the Channel, when one of us was in England. The story is set on Santorini: we wrote it before we had been and were pleasantly surprised to find the island shared some of the descriptions we had imposed on it.<\/p>\n
“Santorini was out of the way, in the middle of no place. It attracted the peculiar and adventurous, the wild, the mildly bored, those with a historical or mythical bent. Stories of Atlantis, of the gods, of Plato and Socrates. Dice watched as the sun left orange smudges in the water, flashing like a million camera flashes, dropping like a penny between the open-jawed cliffs in the West.<\/p>\n
There were plants here that she had never seen before, rubbery and dry, and Lendl now picked up a piece of seagrass from the sand to put between his teeth.\u201d<\/p><\/blockquote>\n
Sat around a microphone, the Greek authors debated the importance of place in literature (some claiming it was best never to have been to the place you write about; an opinion obviously inspired by our story); Cassandra Passarelli read to us of whale bones and New York\u2019s Nathan Schneider spoke of the origins of Occupy Wall Street, \u201cour little revolution\u201d . All of this will be edited into the next episode of the Bookshop\u2019s online radio show, which we will link to as soon as it\u2019s live.<\/p>\n
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![\"Santorini\"](\"http:\/\/www.herroyalmajesty.ca\/wp-content\/uploads\/2011\/11\/DSC_0403.jpg\" "\\"Santorini\\"")
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Photo by Harriet Alida Lye<\/p>\n<\/div>\n
On the whole, the festival was characterized by simplicity and intimacy \u2013 we stood on chairs to read, sharing the same chair (one foot each) – when necessary. People took it in turns to man the till, or rather, sit in the bookseller\u2019s throne and sing along to Chris\u2019 sideways cello. This is what is felt like: that everything came together, and that, on those afternoons and evenings, there was no better place to be on earth.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Seen from above, the Greek island of Santorini looks like a comma. At the northern most tip of this comma\u2019s top is a village called Oia, and if you take the high road \u2013 a tiled walkway, whitewash walls, a blue-domed…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[7,17],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.herroyalmajesty.ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1216"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.herroyalmajesty.ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.herroyalmajesty.ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.herroyalmajesty.ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.herroyalmajesty.ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1216"}],"version-history":[{"count":25,"href":"https:\/\/www.herroyalmajesty.ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1216\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1334,"href":"https:\/\/www.herroyalmajesty.ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1216\/revisions\/1334"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.herroyalmajesty.ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1216"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.herroyalmajesty.ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1216"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.herroyalmajesty.ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1216"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}
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<\/a>Seen from above, the Greek island of Santorini looks like a comma. At the northern most tip of this comma\u2019s top is a village called Oia, and if you take the high road \u2013 a tiled walkway, whitewash walls, a blue-domed church, and more sea than you have ever seen \u2013 you will find a bookshop unlike any other on earth. This is Atlantis.<\/p>\n