Roumeli: Travels in Northern Greece (New York Review Books Classics)
"…ManiandRoumeliremain extraordinarily  engaging   books. This is partly thanks to Leigh Fermor’s ability to turn  an   insight into a telling phrase…and partly thanks to his capacity to    weave a compelling story out of sometimes unpromising material. One of    the best tales of all is the hilarious digression inRoumelion   the attempted recovery of a pair of Byron’s slippers from a man in    Missolonghi, on behalf of Byron’s very odd great-granddaughter Lady    Wentworth…When you see through all the nonsense about Hellenic    continuity, there is, underneath, a much more nuanced account of the    ambivalences of modern Greece, its people and its myths (its own myths    about itself and us, as much as our myths about it)." — Mary Beard,The London Review of Books"Recommended to those who admire exotic people, unbookish intelligence and captivating style." — Gilbert Highet"Here it all is once again: brilliance, the felicitous profusion, the exuberance of learning and information. . . .Roumeliis not a beginning and middle and end book, but a  series of pictures   loosely related, mainly placed in Roumeli, in the  north of Greece.  Its   unity, however, is not geographic so much as  psychological. It deals   with secluded ways and people—communities but  not minglers—people who   either by the necessities of their crafts or the  strength of their   traditions have kept to their own stream, side by  side but not deeply   affected by the changes around them….Placed as we  are at probably the   most sudden turn in history, any writing that deals  with what has so   short a time of survival ahead adds, as it were, a  museum interest to   its own intrinsic qualities. These pictures of Greece  are things that a   coming generation will look for in vain among the  realities of their   day." — Freya Stark,The New York Times“Patrick Leigh Fermor has written great travel books besidesRoumeliandMani,   but I like to think that his extraordinary style is especially well   suited to the subject of Greece, that the beautiful cragginess and   almost blinding brilliance of his prose correspond particularly to that   country’s rugged, dazzled landscapes. Here Fermor establishes an ideal   of travel writing: no one responds to a people and a place with more   erudition and sensitivity.” —Benjamin Kunkel“[Leigh Fermor]  becomes fascinated by the last true nomads of the  region, the  Sarakatsáns.  His description of their wanderings is, for  me, the best  sort of literary geography lesson, and has even more  geopolitical  relevance now than when he wrote it.” - Robin  Hanbury-Tenison,GeographicalPraise for  Patrick Leigh Fermor:"One of the greatest travel writers of all time”–The Sunday  Times“A unique mixture of hero, historian, traveler and writer; the last and   the greatest of a generation whose like we won't see again.”–Geographical“The finest  traveling companion we could ever have . . . His head is  stocked with enough cultural  lore and poetic fancy to make every league  an adventure.” –Evening StandardIf all Europe were  laid waste tomorrow, one might do worse than attempt  to recreate it, or  at least to preserve some sense of historical  splendor and variety, by  immersing oneself in the travel books of  Patrick Leigh Fermor.”—Ben  Downing,The Paris Review