When Étienne Cabet published Voyage en Icarie in 1840, he was trying to present his vision of communism in the form of a story. This was the heyday of utopian socialist dreams —  when the very words “socialism” and “communism” first emerged —  and before Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels’s virulent attacks on such schemes in The Communist Manifesto.

In those days, such literature was effectively kick-starting real-world experimentation. Cabet didn’t just write a book about his imaginary Icaria; he tried to establish actual Icarian colonies in the United States to put such communist ideals into practice. But things did not go as Cabet expected. There was internal strife within the colonies, and Cabet himself was judged to be too authoritarian. A few Icarian communities managed to survive for some decades before the last was dissolved at the end of the century.

But what about actual Ikaria —  the very real Greek island in the east Aegean Sea, ten nautical miles southwest of Samos? Just under a hundred square miles, it’s mostly mountainous and has a population of 8,312. Compared to the islands of Cyclades, Rhodes, Corfu, and Crete, it’s not much of a tourist destination, though it does attract summer visitors.