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The ancient Greeks imagined a place called the Islands of the Blessed, which in some ways resembled the idea of the Christian heaven, except that this was paradise on Earth where the chosen few would go to when it came time to die.

At first glance the green seems confined to the river banks and triangular Nile Delta but on closer inspection tiny flecks appear in Egypt's Western Desert forming a series of stepping stones across the Sahara - "islands of the blessed" as they were called in ancient times.

When Odysseus is freed from the fatal embrace of Calypso, he is not at once restored to the common earth, but from his descent into hell goes heavenwards, or at least to the happy islands of the blessed.

The essays on books are unpretentious notes—eight pages on Henry James, seven on Maupassant, twelve on Anatole France, short excursions in criticism made between the longer voyages to the islands of the blessed.

Above me was the blue abyss of the stars; below me stretched a blue ocean, on whose horizon glittered, in the glow of the sunset, the countless islands of the blessed; around me floated scattered cloudlets, tinted with the red and white of roses and of lilies, and with the many colors of manifold flowers.