The Butterflies Fly Backwards

"Jani’s descriptive prose beckons me back to Corfu, smelling the soft evening air and hearing the sea.

Charming and amusing in equal measure, this is a book to cheer the saddest heart."

Joanna Lumley

Swopping high heels and catwalks for oilskins and windswept decks, the author had stepped into married life in unconventional fashion. Sixteen years later, with a calamitous track record of fire, flood and burglaries safely behind them, there was surely nothing left for the Fates to throw at her family.

Rather than buying a holiday home on a whim they find the boat of their dreams and set sail for Corfu with their two children. For eight years they revel in life afloat, cruising the Ionian Islands with an endless procession of friends on board. Far from a sailing journal, this is a story of sun filled days and star spangled nights with a boat thrown in.

Falling ever more under the spell of Corfu and its people, making friends with waiters, taxi drivers, aristocrats and tycoons, learning Greek along the way and becoming increasingly disenchanted with life in England, they decide to build their permanent home on the island.

Their charmed new life in Corfu should have lasted forever, but several pitfalls and one more disaster lay in wait for them ...

With her meticulous eye for detail, her love of nature and sense of the ridiculous, the author and illustrator of The Manor House Stories paints a picture of the island from which the vibrant colours, scents, sounds, flavours and characters leap from the pages.