Brenan came out of the First World War trenches feeling sick of Western civilization. He sought somewhere remote and unknown where he could hole up and recuperate, and he found the perfect place in the village of Yergan, between Granada and the Mediterranean, in the foothills of the Sierra Nevada mountains. It was then an unimaginably remote place, virtually self-sufficient because of the fertile soil and the waters that came off the mountains. He writes with a clear eye of the villagers anti-clericalism, their family feuds, their courting rituals and of the two village prostitutes. He also writes of long trips to the coastal town of Almeria and the city of Granada; trips that feel like feats of endurance as theyre undertaken by foot or on donkey.