{"product_id":"roumeli-isbn-9781590171875","title":"Roumeli","description":"\u003cb\u003eGet lost in northern Greece with one of the greatest travel writers of the 20th century as he travels to monasteries, among shepherds, and throughout the hills, mountains, and rugged coastline of this enchanted land. \u003c\/b\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eRoumeli is not to be found on present-day maps. It is the name  once given to northern Greece—stretching from the Bosporus to the  Adriatic and from Macedonia to the Gulf of Corinth, a name that evokes a  world where the present is inseparably bound up with the past.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e \u003ci\u003eRoumeli\u003c\/i\u003e describes Patrick Leigh Fermor’s wanderings in  and around this mysterious and yet very real region. He takes us with  him among Sarakatsan shepherds, to the monasteries of Meteora and the  villages of Krakora, and on a mission to track down a pair of Byron’s  slippers at Missolonghi. As he does, he brings to light the inherent  conflicts of the Greek inheritance—the tenuous links to the classical  and Byzantine heritage, the legacy of Ottoman domination—along with an  underlying, even older world, traces of which Leigh Fermor finds in the  hills and mountains and along stretches of barely explored coast.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003ci\u003eRoumeli\u003c\/i\u003e is a companion volume to Patrick Leigh Fermor’s famous\u003ci\u003e Mani: Travels in the Southern Peloponnese\u003c\/i\u003e.\"…\u003ci\u003eMani\u003c\/i\u003e and \u003ci\u003eRoumeli\u003c\/i\u003e remain 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 in \u003ci\u003eRoumeli\u003c\/i\u003e on   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, \u003ci\u003eThe London Review of Books\u003c\/i\u003e \u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\"Recommended to those who admire exotic people, unbookish intelligence and captivating style.\" — Gilbert Highet \u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e \u003ci\u003e\"\u003c\/i\u003eHere it all is once again: brilliance, the felicitous profusion, the exuberance of learning and information. . . .\u003ci\u003eRoumeli\u003c\/i\u003e is 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, \u003ci\u003eThe New York Times\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003c\/i\u003e“Patrick Leigh Fermor has written great travel books besides \u003ci\u003eRoumeli\u003c\/i\u003e and \u003ci\u003eMani\u003c\/i\u003e,   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\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e“[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, \u003ci\u003eGeographical\u003c\/i\u003e \u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e \u003cb\u003e\u003cbr\u003e Praise for  Patrick Leigh Fermor: \u003c\/b\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\u003ePatricia Storace\u003c\/b\u003e is the author of \u003ci\u003eHeredity\u003c\/i\u003e, a book of poems, \u003ci\u003eDinner with Persephone\u003c\/i\u003e, a travel memoir about Greece, \u003ci\u003eSugar Cane\u003c\/i\u003e, a children’s book, and \u003ci\u003eThe Book of Heaven\u003c\/i\u003e, a novel. She lives in New York.","brand":"NYRB Classics","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":46305208369381,"sku":"NP9781590171875","price":19.95,"currency_code":"USD","in_stock":false}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/1842\/7735\/files\/9781590171875.jpg?v=1767735931","url":"https:\/\/k12savings.com\/products\/roumeli-isbn-9781590171875","provider":"K12savings","version":"1.0","type":"link"}