The broken road : from the Iron Gates to Mount Athos
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"In the winter of 1933 eighteen-year-old Patrick ('Paddy') Leigh Fermor set out to walk across Europe, starting in Holland and ending in Constantinople, a trip that took him the better part of a year. Decades later, when he was well over fifty, Leigh Fermor told the story of that life-changing journey in A time of gifts and Between the woods and the water ... The broken road is the long and avidly awaited account of the final leg of his youthful adventure that Leigh Fermor promised but was unable to finish before his death in 2011, assembled from Leigh Fermor's manuscripts by his prize-winning biographer Artemis Cooper and the travel writer Colin Thubron"--
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Series
3 primary booksTrilogy
Trilogy is a 3-book series with 3 primary works first released in 195 with contributions by Yōko Tawada and Patrick Leigh Fermor.
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Of the three books in the trilogy, this is probably my favourite. Whether this is because I am very familiar with one of the stops on the journey (Bucharest), which made this a fascinating description of the interbellum city and its inhabitants, or whether it is because this was the first part of the tale to be written down and thus has a more youthful, raw tone, I am not sure. Certainly the final stages of the book, which take place after the completion of the journey, are drawn directly from diaries written at the time, which lends the observations an immediacy that is refreshing.
The trilogy as whole is the very definition of a tour de force, unlike any other travelogue (except maybe Jupiters Travels). It captures both the atmosphere of inter-war Europe, when Eastern Europe could still be as mysterious a place as the Far East, and also paints a wonderful picture of the people encountered on the way. The author obviously has a deep respect for the people who crossed his path or helped him on his way.
This should be high on the reading list of anyone with an interest in real life adventure (with a small ‘a' since the book deals more with human relationships than adversity).
