The Adventurer

A Newsweek description of travel author Patrick Leigh Fermor.  He could be a character in a book.
What life has been lived with more élan? At the age of 18, Leigh Fermor walked from the Hook of Holland to Constantinople—never “Istanbul” to this irrepressible philhellene—a serendipitous, marathon journey immortalized half a century later in the refulgent prose of A Time of Gifts and Between the Woods and the Water. He has secluded himself silently with Trappist monks, fallen in love and run away with a princess, fought for his country, kidnapped a German general, joined a Greek cavalry charge, and swum the Hellespont. The Financial Times considered Mani, his celebrated travelogue on the southern Peloponnese, and Roumeli, its counterpart on northern Greece, “two of the best travel books of the century.”


Comments

  1. FredAugust 10, 2017 at 11:00 AM

    While I haven't read anything by Fermor yet, I have several of his books in my Search List.

    ReplyDelete
  2. ShadowAugust 10, 2017 at 11:15 AM

    Search list meaning you are looking for them?

    ReplyDelete
  3. FredAugust 10, 2017 at 11:23 AM

    Shadow Flutter--not yet. It's list of books I want to read sometime down the road. In my blog I have a list of books that are in the queue and books that I'm reading now. When the queue is empty I go to my Search List and starting looking for the top one on the List.

    Right now my queue is empty, so I will visit my Search List and begin looking for the top one, if it still interests me now.

    ReplyDelete
  4. ShadowAugust 10, 2017 at 12:32 PM

    Ah, I have such a list too. I've been reading Black Lamb, Grey Falcon, as you know. I am also doing online reading of summaries of other travel books, and as I do so I'm realizing there is a certain type of travel book that informs better about the people of a certain area and time than do many history books. So my search list now includes more travel books.

    ReplyDelete
  5. MudpuddleAugust 10, 2017 at 11:55 PM

    i read "Gift" and liked it... and started Black Lamb, Grey Falcon, but West's superior attitude toward the indigenes was a bit off putting, so i sort of abandoned it in favor of a Toyota pick up manual...

    ReplyDelete
  6. ShadowAugust 11, 2017 at 7:53 AM

    Mudpuddle,

    I suspect that attitude still exists. We have yet to give the Byzantine Empire its due. The way we talk in the West, or at least in the U.S., you'd think the Dark and Middle Ages blanketed the world.

    ReplyDelete

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