Honour’s Mimic

Charmian Clift

‘We are alike, Kathy thought. You are a desperate one, too. She was incredulous that she could be so happy when it was so perfectly clear that the situation was impossible, could not possibly last, and that in any case this man was doomed already.’

Kathy is recovering on a remote Greek island after a near-fatal car accident. With her cropped red hair barely hiding a scaron her skull, she stands out. Then she meets a sponge diver who she recognises as a fellow ‘desperate one.’ When these twin souls fall in love, ‘honour’ becomes ‘mimic’ and is cast aside, together with the rules of both their societies.

Honour’s Mimic was Charmian Clift’s second solo novel, first published in 1964, and captures the Greek island life that appears in her travel memoirs Mermaid Singing and Peel Me a Lotus. It is republished here with a new afterword from her biographer, Nadia Wheatley.

Release: Jun-2025

ISBN: 9781761170416

RRP (AUD): $34.99

Pages: 272

Format: Paperback & ebook

Charmian Clift (1923 – 1969) was born in the costal town of Kiama. Clift and her husband George Johnston, along with their three children, lived and wrote for many years in the cosmopolitan community of artists on the Greek island of Hydra and before that Kalymnos.