Island life behind the holiday

Jamaica Kincaid addresses tourists to Antigua directly in a short, furious essay, tying the visitor’s pleasant holiday to colonial history, corruption and the lives of the island’s residents.

Gerald Durrell recalls the years his eccentric family spent on Corfu in the 1930s, when as a boy he roamed the island collecting insects, birds and other animals.

Lawrence Durrell buys and restores an old house in a Cypriot village in the 1950s and records his neighbors’ friendship as the island moves toward violent conflict over British rule.

J. Maarten Troost spends two years on Tarawa, a Pacific atoll in Kiribati, in a comic memoir of heat, shortages and island customs.

James Rebanks, a sheep farmer, spends seasons on a Norwegian island with women who build shelters for wild eider ducks and gather their down, learning a way of life tied to birds and place.