Cyprus Revisited with "Othello in Love" — Richard Murray

"Cyprus Revisited"with "Othello in Love" A work of fiction based on the beautiful and historic Mediterranean island of Cyprus in which the principal characters are first depicted working together harmoniously in London: something that is not possible on their unsettled Island. The story tells how Cyprus becomes a transition camp for resettling thousands of the European survivors of the holocaust in 1948, before misfortune results in a seven year old Jewish child remaining behind whilst his parents journey on to their promised land without him. The book travels through the Christian Byzantine and Muslim Ottoman history of Cyprus to the start of British rule in the late nineteenth century. Thereafter, periods of unrest under British rule in the 1950s are depicted through the lives of individuals who celebrate independence from Britain, when a Greek Orthodox Archbishop becomes their elected head of state. After independence trouble between ethnic groups again rears its ugly head in Cyprus; yet the warmth of the people and their cultural traditions of chaperoning their daughters and arranging marriages, endure. A period of peace and prosperity is enjoyed in Cyprus before a coup d'¿tat - orchestrated by the Athens military Junta - leads to invasion and partition of the Island by Turkey in 1974. The citrus fruit growing tradition subsequently gives way to property development and tourism in the Greek held south, whilst cheap land and labour help a profitable citrus business to grow under the Turkish administration in the north. The Greek coup d'¿tat; Turkish invasion and subsequent rape of a Greek woman by Turkish soldiers; ethnic cleansing; the blowing up of an American CIA agent's vehicle and a carefully planned escape by sea, which ends in death and disaster, are all events the author weaves into a plot in which the reader is propelled through a mix of fact and fiction to discover the consequences, when a gigantic profit is realised by the principal characters amidst