The Balkan Trilogy

This trilogy belongs to the category of novels that have left me emotionally drained. Over the five weeks it took me to read them I felt as though I had actually been living in Bucharest and Athens with the Pringles. You suspect that much of what is written is what Olivia Manning experienced herself as she described the play of light on a winter's afternoon on the Calei Victorei or walking along the beach in Greece on a cold, wintry Christmas Day. As the English community realise they must evacuate from Athens at the end of the novel you felt their unease and discomfort, the whole disruption and uncertainty and need to escape.
Surely Prince Yakimov has to be one of English literature's greatest characters, a 20th Century Micawber who is a scoundrel yet pathetic and equally charming in his shabbiness.
Reading these novels has been an experience - an absolutely stunning work of art.