AustLit

'Joice NanKivell Loch’s life was dedicated to helping others. It was a role she wrote about in her autobiography, A Fringe of Blue (1968), which she completed with assistance from friends while recovering after a bad fall from a worm-eaten balcony of the Byzantine tower on the Athos peninsula in eastern Greece where she had lived for most of the preceding four decades. This essay thinks concurrently about her two commitments—to writing and to humanitarian work—as they come together in A Fringe of Blue. Of particular interest are long sections of NanKivell Loch’s autobiography that have as their focus her experiences in the Aegean, where she made her home and found herself a neighbour to refugees she had initially set out to assist.'  (Publication abstract)