Half the Perfect World
is an account of the expatriate artist community on the Greek island of Hydra from 1955 to 1964. Fostered by celebrated Australian literary couple Charmian Clift and George Johnston, this fabled 'colony' came to include Leonard Cohen and numerous other writers and artists. What brought this group to Hydra? What does their story reveal about the post-war world? Looking at the Hydra expatriates through their writing, letters, diaries, and photographs, Genoni and Dalziell identify a deep restlessness within a rapidly changing time of emerging social movements and counter-cultures, shifting geo-political realities, incipient pop-cultures, new technologies of communication and entertainment, and altered understandings of what it meant to live as an expatriate artist.