A Time of GiftsPatrick Leigh Fermor (1977) |
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THE A5 BOOK REVIEWA Time of Gifts is the first book in a classic three volume travel writing series covering Patrick Leigh Fermor’s journey in 1933-1934 as an eighteen-year-old traveling by foot from Holland to Constantinople. Interestingly, this book was only first published more than forty years later, supported by a lost diary that was found in a Romanian castle and returned, many years after. As such, Leigh Fermor’s memoir combines both the youthful exuberant reaction to his adventure and the retrospective view of an older and wiser man. This was an interesting period in history; Leigh Fermor provides a unique view into the time before the Communism took over the East. William Dalrymple called the book a “sublime masterpiece”. A Time of Gifts is the first in a series of three, with Between the Woods and the Water (1986) taking off from where the first book ends. Fans of travel literature should add this book and series to their library.
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OTHER A5 RECOMMENDATIONS - PATRICK LEIGH FERMORPatrick Leigh Fermor (1915-2011) was a British travel writer, scholar, and soldier, once described by a BBC journalist as a blend of Indiana Jones, James Bond, and Graham Greene. Not a bad combination! His work influenced many future writers. Click here to learn more about Patrick Leigh Fermor.
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#2 in the trilogy
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#3 in the trilogy
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GREAT QUOTES FROM A TIME OF GIFTS“As I have only just finished piecing these travels together, the times dealt with are very fresh in my mind and later events seem more recent still; so it is hard to believe that in 1942 in Crete, when we first met - both of us black-turbanned, booted and sashed and appropriately silver-and-ivory daggered and cloaked in white goats' hair and deep in grime - was more than three decades ago. Many meetings and adventures followed that first encounter on the slopes of Mt. Kedros, and fortunately our kind of irregular warfare held long spells of inaction in the sheltering mountains; it was usually at eagle height, with branches or constellations overhead, or dripping winter stalactites, that we lay among the rocks and talked of our lives before the war."
- introductory letter by Patrick Leigh Fermor to his wartime colleague Xan Fielding, in A Time of Gifts "My mother was filled with apprehension to begin with; we pored over the atlas, and, bit by bit as we pored, the comic possibilities began to unfold in absurd imaginary scenes until we were falling about with laughter; and by the time I caught the train to London next morning, she was infected with my excitement.” - Patrick Leigh Fermor, A Time of Gifts INTERESTING LINKS:
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