Certainly my favourite of the three Norman Lewis books I've read so far, this covers three consecutive summers in the years post-WWII spent in a pseudonymous fishing village on the Costa Brava, and the effacement within that period of the traditional way of life by easy tourist money. Lewis gradually gets himself accepted by the villagers, joins them on fishing expeditions with line, net, and spear, and writes with his usual effortless grace, precision, and humour of the place and its people.

The cultural oddities of Farol, and its impoverished inland neighbour village of Sort, seem inexhaustible. Farol in general, and its fishermen in particular, are vehemently irreligious, refusing to enter the church or to admit the priest to their houses, their bar, or their boats. Leather shoes are absolutely taboo. In the evenings in the bar, the fishermen recount their days at sea (in Castilian, not their habitual Catalan) in extemporised epic coplas which, as reported by Lewis, are of a very high standard. The itinerant wise man/healer/curandero is relied upon not just for medical aid but for dispute resolution and life advice in general, which he accomplishes with astrology, tarot-readings and a folk-pharmacopeia. The local decayed gentleman retains a quasi-feudal relationship with a few peon families who work his land in return for bread and beans. The poverty is as extreme as the quirkiness, exacerbated by subpar sardine harvests and the decimation of the cork plantations, sole resource of Sort, by disease. Marriages are on hold, sex is only allowed at siesta time, and the curandero's marinated sea-sponge contraceptives are in high demand in an effort to limit the number of mouths to feed.