Bitter Lemons is an autobiographical work by writer Lawrence Durrell, describing the three years (1953–1956) he spent on the island of Cyprus.

Durrell moved to Cyprus in 1953, following several years spent working for the British Council in Argentina and the Foreign Office in Yugoslavia.

In 1956, he abandoned his home on the island and left Cyprus very rapidly for a very brief residence in the UK, relocating to France for the remaining three decades of his life.

Durrell was not enamoured with the Greek Cypriot militants, however, and felt that they were dragging the island to a "feast of unreason" and that "embedded so deeply in the medieval compost of religious hatreds, the villagers floundered in the muddy stream of undifferentiated hate like drowning men."

The account ends with him fleeing the island without saying goodbye to his friends, approaching the "heavily guarded airport" by taxi in conversation with the driver who tells him "Dighenis, though he fights the British, really loves them.