“Pytheas’s narrative is one of the famous lost books of history”

ere’s a summer tale for an autumn day - a sailor’s yarn. I’m writing this in an old shipping office in Amorgos in the Cyclades; along the quay a few yachts with rattling halyards, a fisherman cleaning his nets and washing the deck of his caique. On the wall, faded posters advertise tickets to Rhodes, Haifa and Alexandria, Bari, Venice and Trieste.