{"product_id":"between-the-woods-and-the-water-isbn-9781590171660","title":"Between the Woods and the Water","description":"\u003cb\u003eContinuing the epic foot journey across Europe  begun in \u003ci\u003eA Time of Gifts\u003c\/i\u003e, Patrick Leigh Fermor writes about walking from Hungary to the Balkans. \u003c\/b\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eThe  journey that Patrick Leigh Fermor set  out on in 1933—to cross Europe  on foot with an emergency allowance of one pound  a day—proved so rich  in experiences that when much later he sat down to describe  them, they  overflowed into more than one volume. Undertaken as the storms of war   gathered, and providing a background for the events that were beginning  to unfold  in Central Europe, Leigh Fermor’s still-unfinished account of  his journey has  established itself as a modern classic. \u003ci\u003eBetween the Woods and the Water\u003c\/i\u003e,  the second volume of a projected three, has garnered as many prizes as its celebrated  predecessor, \u003ci\u003eA Time of Gifts\u003c\/i\u003e.  \u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e The opening of the book finds Leigh  Fermor crossing the  Danube—at the very moment where his first volume left off.  A detour to  the luminous splendors of Prague is followed by a trip downriver to  Budapest,  passage on horseback across the Great Hungarian Plain, and a  crossing of the Romanian  border into Transylvania. Remote castles,  mountain villages, monasteries and towering  ranges that are the haunt  of bears, wolves, eagles, gypsies, and a variety of sects  are all  savored in the approach to the Iron Gates, the division between the  Carpathian  mountains and the Balkans, where, for now, the story ends.\"Those for whom Paddy’s prose is still an undiscovered country  are   to be envied for what lies ahead-hours with one of the most buoyant   and  curious personalities one can find in English.\" — \u003ci\u003eThe New York Sun\u003c\/i\u003e \u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e \"Mr. Fermor…is a peerless companion, unbound by timetable or convention, relentless in his high spirits and curiosity.\" — Richard B. Woodward, \u003ci\u003eThe New York Times\u003c\/i\u003e \u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e \"We are aware at every step that his adventure can never be    duplicated: only this extraordinary person at this pivotal time could    have experienced and recorded many of these sights. Distant lightening    from events in Germany weirdly illuminates the trail of this free    spirit.\" — \u003ci\u003eThe New York Times\u003c\/i\u003e \u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e \"The young Fermor appears to have been as delightful a traveling companion as the much older Fermor a raconteur.\" — \u003ci\u003eThe Houston Chronicle\u003c\/i\u003e \u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\"[\u003ci\u003eA Time of Gifts\u003c\/i\u003e, \u003ci\u003eBetween the Woods and the Water\u003c\/i\u003e]    are absolutely delightful volumes, both for those who want to better    understand what was lost in the violence of Europe’s 20th-century    divisions and for those who appreciate the beauty and thrill of travel    writing at its best.\" — \u003ci\u003eThe Houston Chronicle\u003c\/i\u003e \u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e \"Leigh Fermor is recognizably that figure many writers of the past century have yearned to be, the man of action.\" — \u003ci\u003eThe Guardian\u003c\/i\u003e \u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e \"He was, and remains, an Englishman, with so much living to his credit    that the lives conducted by the rest of us seem barely  sentient-pinched   and paltry things, laughably provincial in their  scope, and no more   fruitful than sleepwalks. We fret about our kids’  S.A.T. scores, whereas   this man, when he was barely more than a kid  himself, shouldered a   rucksack and walked from Rotterdam to Istanbul.\"  — Anthony Lane, \u003ci\u003eThe New Yorker\u003c\/i\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e“Even   more  magical...through Hungary, its lost province of Transylvania, and   into  Romania...sampling the tail end of a languid, urbane and  anglophile   way of life that would soon be swept away forever.” —Jeremy  Lewis, \u003ci\u003eLiterary Review\u003c\/i\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e“In   these two volumes of  extraordinary lyrical beauty and discursive,   staggering erudition,  Leigh Fermor recounted his first great   excursion... They’re partially  about an older author’s encounter with   his young self, but they’re  mostly an evocation of a lost Mitteleuropa   of wild horses and dark  forests, of ancient synagogues and vivacious   Jewish coffeehouses, of  Hussars and Uhlans, and of high-spirited and   deeply eccentric  patricians with vast libraries (such as the   Transylvanian count who was  a famous entomologist specializing in Far   Eastern moths and who spoke  perfect English, though with a heavy   Scottish accent, thanks to his  Highland nanny). These books amply   display Leigh Fermor’s keen eye and  preternatural ear for languages,  but  what sets them apart, besides the  utterly engagin persona of their   narrator, is his historical  imagination and intricate sense of   historical linkage... Few writers  are as alive to the persistence of  the  past (he’s ever alert to the  historical forces that account for  the  shifts in custom, language,  architecture, and costume that he  discerns),  and I’ve read none who are  so sensitive to the layers of  invasion that  define the part of Europe  he depicts here. The unusual  vantage point of  these books lends them  great pregnancy, for we and  the author know what  the youthful Leigh  Fermor cannot: that the war  will tear the scenery and  shatter the  buildings he evokes; that German  and Soviet occupation will  uproot the  beguiling world of those  Tolstoyan nobles; and that in fact  very few  people who became his  friends on this marvelous and sunny  journey will  survive the coming  catastrophe.” -- Benjamin Schwartz, \u003ci\u003eThe Atlantic\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003c\/i\u003e\"This   is a glorious feast, the account of a walk in 1934 from  the Hook  of   Holland to what was then Constantinople. The 18-year-old  Fermor  began   by sleeping in barns but, after meeting some landowners  early on,  got   occasional introductions to castles. So he experienced  life from   both  sides, and with all the senses, absorbing everything:  flora and   fauna,  art and architecture, geography, clothing, music,  foods,   religions,  languages. Writing the book decades after the fact, in  a   baroque style  that is always rigorous, never flowery, he was able to    inject  historical depth while still retaining the feeling of boyish     enthusiasm and boundless curiosity. This is the first of a still     uncompleted trilogy; the second volume, \u003ci\u003eBetween the Woods and the Water\u003c\/i\u003e,     takes him through Hungary and Romania; together they capture better     than any books I know the remedial, intoxicating joy of travel.\" —    Thomas Swick, \u003ci\u003eSouth Florida Sun-Sentinel\u003c\/i\u003e \u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e“Recovers  the    innocence and the excitement of youth, when everything was possible    and  the world seemed luminescent with promise. ...Even  more    magical...through Hungary, its lost province of Transylvania,  and into    Romania... sampling the tail end of a languid, urbane and  anglophile    way of life that would soon be swept away forever.” —Jeremy  Lewis, \u003ci\u003eLiterary Review\u003c\/i\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e“A book so good you resent finishing it.” —Norman Stone\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\"The greatest of living travel writers…an amazingly complex and subtle evocation of a place that is no more.\" — Jan Morris \u003cbr\u003e\u003ci\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003c\/i\u003e\u003cb\u003ePraise for  Patrick Leigh Fermor: \u003c\/b\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e \"One of the greatest travel writers of all time”–\u003ci\u003eThe Sunday  Times\u003c\/i\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e “A unique mixture of hero, historian, traveler and writer; the last and         the greatest of a generation whose like we won't see again.”–\u003ci\u003eGeographical\u003c\/i\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e “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.” –\u003ci\u003eEvening Standard\u003c\/i\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eIf 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, \u003ci\u003eThe Paris Review\u003c\/i\u003e\u003cb\u003ePatrick Leigh Fermor\u003c\/b\u003e (1915-2011) was an intrepid  traveler, a heroic soldier, and a writer with a unique prose style.  After his stormy schooldays, followed by the walk across Europe to  Constantinople that begins in \u003ci\u003eA Time of Gifts\u003c\/i\u003e (1977) and continues through \u003ci\u003eBetween the Woods and the Water\u003c\/i\u003e (1986), he lived and traveled in the Balkans and the Greek Archipelago. His books \u003ci\u003eMani\u003c\/i\u003e (1958) and \u003ci\u003eRoumeli\u003c\/i\u003e (1966) attest to his deep interest in languages and remote places. In  the Second World War he joined the Irish Guards, became a liaison officer  in Albania, and fought in Greece and Crete. He was awarded the DSO and  OBE. He lived partly in Greece—in the house he designed with his wife,  Joan, in an olive grove in the Mani—and partly in Worcestershire. He was  knighted in 2004 for his services to literature and to British–Greek  relations.  \u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e \u003cb\u003eJan Morris\u003c\/b\u003e was born in 1926, is Anglo-Welsh, and lives in  Wales.  She has written some forty books, including the Pax Britannica  trilogy about the British Empire; studies of Wales, Spain, Venice,  Oxford, Manhattan, Sydney, Hong Kong, and Trieste; six volumes of  collected travel essays; two memoirs; two capricious biographies; and a  couple of novels—but she defines her entire oeuvre as “disguised  autobiography.” She is an honorary D.Litt. of the University of Wales  and a Commander of the British Empire.  Her memoir \u003ci\u003eConundrum\u003c\/i\u003e is available as a New York Review Book Classic.","brand":"NYRB Classics","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":46301931569381,"sku":"NP9781590171660","price":18.95,"currency_code":"USD","in_stock":false}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/1842\/7735\/files\/9781590171660.jpg?v=1767722506","url":"https:\/\/k12savings.com\/es\/products\/between-the-woods-and-the-water-isbn-9781590171660","provider":"K12savings","version":"1.0","type":"link"}