On a windy spring morning in an ancient Cretan village, Rory MacLean fell to earth. His mother had died a few months earlier and a single obsession had risen from his grief: the notion to build a feather-light flying machine. And so, on the island where Daedalus and Icarus had made man’s maiden flight, MacLean journeyed back to beginnings, back into the Greek myths, and—with the help of his Cretan neighbors and plenty of wine—built a plane and tried to fly.

Falling for Icarus is at once a meditation on love, a celebration of the passion for flight, and a hilarious, vivid portrait of a village. Its generous and exhilarating characters restore MacLean’s faith in life. Through them, he tells a soaring, moving story about how a dream can transform sadness.

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Rory MacLean is a writer, broadcaster, blogger, and fellow of the Royal Society of Literature. His eight books, including UK bestsellersStalin's Nose andUnder the Dragon, have challenged and invigorated travel writing and, according to the late John Fowles, are among works that “marvellously explain why literature still lives.” He has won awards from the Canada Council and the Arts Council of England as well as a Winston Churchill Travelling Fellowship, and was nominated for the International IMPAC Dublin Literary prize. He has written and presented over 50 BBC radio programs and worked on movies with Marlene Dietrich and David Bowie. Born in Canada and resident for many years in Britain, Rory now divides his time between London and Berlin.

“The heart-warming evocation of one man’s loving obsession: lyrical, funny, compassionate” --Colin Thubron, travel writer and novelist “Rory MacLean is one of the most strikingly original and talented travel writers of our generation” -- Katie Hickman, bestselling author and travel writer “An extraordinary work, curious and entertaining, tantilizing, often moving and above all entirely original – like everything MacLean writes, it’s in a genre of its own” -- Jan Morris, author, journalist, and travel writer