[3] It is set on an imaginary island called Nepenthe, located off the coast of Italy in the Tyrrhenian Sea,[1] a thinly fictionalized description of Capri's residents and visitors.
The narrative concerns twelve days during which Thomas Heard, a bishop returning to England from his diocese in Africa, yields his moral vigour to various influences.
[3] The island's name Nepenthe denotes a drug of Egyptian origin (mentioned in the Odyssey) which was capable of banishing grief or trouble from the mind.
[8] The book was adapted for the stage in London in 1923 by Isabel C. Tippett,[3] and Graham Greene considered the possibility of writing a film script based on it.
In Robert McAlmon's Being Geniuses Together, he mentions meeting Norman Douglas in Venice in 1924, by which time he says South Wind was a minor classic.