TRAVEL CLASSIC

BETWEEN THE WOODS AND THE WATER - PATRICK LEIGH FERMOR

This is the second book in  the account of Fermor's walk from Holland to Constantinople in 1933 at the age of nineteen   He wrote the first account A TIME OF GIFTS in 1977 and this one in 1986, the third is still to come. Fermor is now 95 and still writing after living a life full of adventures.  Considered a classic of travel writing, the book is dense with descriptions and history making it slow but fascinating reading. Two times -- the time before World War II when he was walking and the post war time when it was written, and in which the reader lives inform the book.  I kept wondering what happened especially to the gypsies, the rabbi and rabbinical students,but really to everyone he met along the way.  He tells us a few of the afterlives of the people he kept up with, but of the chance acquaintances we can only wonder as to their fates.  It is a picture of the world of Hungary, Rumania, and Transylvania, now lost forever.

Available from virtual catalogue. You might want to start with first book A TIME OF GIFTS