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These two classic travel works by Charmian Clift describing the life she and her Australian family led in Greece in the 1950's are re-released here in one volume to coincide with the publication of Nadia Wheatley's landmark biography of Charmian. In Mermaid Singing - written during the first miraculous year of discovery - she records the family's adaptation to the primitive sponge-diving island of Kalymnos. Peel Me a Lotus continues the exploration as Clift and Johnson buy a house on the island of Hydra, in the middle of the summer tourist trail. Clift's writing about Greece was undervalued at the time of first publication, because she wrote from a women's point of view and recorded the intimate details of daily life. It is exactly this quality which enables this classic to appeal to a new generation of readers.