Patrick Leigh Fermor recounts the last leg of his epic walk across
Europe as he makes his way through Bulgaria, Romania, and finally
Greece.
In the winter of 1933, eighteen-year-old Patrick ("Paddy") Leigh Fermor
set out on a walk across Europe, starting in Holland and ending in
Constantinople. Decades later, Leigh Fermor told the story of that
life-changing journey in A Time of Gifts and Between the Woods and
the Water, works now celebrated as among the most vivid, absorbing, and
beautifully written travel books of all time.
The Broken Road is the account of the final leg of his journey,
catching up with Paddy in the fall of 1934, following him through
Bulgaria and Romania and ending in Greece. Days and nights on the road,
spectacular landscapes and uncanny cities, friendships lost and found,
leading the high life in Bucharest or camping out with fishermen and
shepherds--such incidents and escapades are described with all the
linguistic bravura and astonishing learning that Leigh Fermor is famous
for, but also with a melancholy awareness of the passage of time.
Throughout it we can hear the still-ringing voice of an irrepressible
young man embarking on a life of adventure.