A Theater for Dreamers

By: Polly Samson

Narrated by: Polly Samson

“Sublime and immersive . . . If you wish you could disappear to a Greek island right now, I highly recommend.”
—Jojo Moyes, #1 bestselling author of Me Before You

“This gorgeous, glimmering summer read is itself perfect summer: irresistible and deep, Samson's lyric sentences pulling you into unforgettable sunlight and shadow.”
—Amy Bloom, New York Times bestselling author of White Houses

It’s 1960, and the world teeters on the edge of cultural, political, sexual, and artistic revolution. On the Greek island of Hydra, a proto-commune of poets, painters, and musicians revel in dreams at the feet of their unofficial leaders, the writers Charmian Clift and George Johnston, troubled queen and king of bohemia. At the center of this circle of misfit artists are the captivating and inscrutable Axel Jensen, his magnetic wife Marianne Ihlen, and a young Canadian ingenue poet named Leonard Cohen.

When eighteen-year-old Erica stumbles into their world, she’s fresh off the boat from London with nothing but a bundle of blank notebooks and a burning desire to leave home in the wake of her mother’s death. Among these artists, she will find an unraveling utopia where everything is tested—the nature of art, relationships, and her own innocence.

Intoxicating and immersive, A Theater for Dreamers is a spellbinding tour-de-force about the beauty between naïveté and cruelty, chaos and utopia, artist and muse—and about the wars waged between men and women on the battlegrounds of genius. Roiling with the heat of a Grecian summer, A Theater for Dreamers is, according to the Guardian, “a blissful piece of escapism” and “a surefire summer hit.”

Hydra, Leonard

This book is a treasure. Thank you Polly Samson. Hydra, Leonard, the sea, the food, the dialogs.

Engrossing Greek island drama, beautifully narrated

Hydra and Idra, Hope and regret, Love and jealousy, tortured souls and living ghosts. Artists and dreamers. Cats and donkeys. Ouzo. Pink bougainvillea, gleaming white limestone and glinting blue Aegean.
Evocative telling of an unforgettable year in the company of a tortured, talented community of writers and artists of the free-loving 60’s, and those dreamers who share their lives on the famed Greek isle. Suddenly immersed in an exotic sun-drenched island life, so unimaginable to a depressed young teenager of post-war London, Erica tries to grasp the intricacies of adulthood & love, the jealousies both artistic and personal, that weave through the lives of those who have chosen to live there. Australian, Norwegian, American or Canadian - with all characters narrated beautifully; embodying the challenges inherent in adapting to a rugged and unsophisticated island life. The steep, winding narrow paths that wind up from the port, to the imposing Mount Eros, everyone depending on donkeys & mules for transporting everything, the family-run taverna’s dishing up lamb stew, the fishermen supplying their daily catch, & the ferries from Athens connecting them all to the outside world. A world that the island is in no hurry to join.
This is a treasure of a story. My 1st visit to Idra in 2024 is 10yrs exactly after the author’s, & yet I recognize the island she describes so beautifully in this tale beginning in 1960. My visit to Dusko’s Taverna & seeing a photo of Cohen leaning by the tree, surrounded by the cast of characters, real & imagined, is a memory that will never fade. Reading this book brings it all back vividly.

On an island is where this book blissfully kept me

The descriptions were unparalleled to anything I've read about a place, people or time. I was blissfully immersed in the world Polly's words created. Loved it!