Order from a Major Online Bookstore
Ultimate Book Price Comparison Engine
Save Your Time And Money
| AnyBook4Less.com | Order from a Major Online Bookstore |
|
| Home | Store List | FAQ | Contact Us | | ||
| Ultimate Book Price Comparison Engine Save Your Time And Money |
||
 |
Title: Roumeli (Travel Library) by Patrick Leigh Fermor ISBN: 0-14-009504-7 Publisher: Penguin Books Ltd Pub. Date: September, 1983 Format: Paperback Volumes: 1 List Price(USD): $7.95 |
Average Customer Rating: 5 (2 reviews)
Rating: 5
Summary: A beautiful book on Hellas
Comment: All of Patrick Leigh Fermor's books are of an unusual beauty, but this is without doubt the most beautiful of all. But the author is not for just anyone. I have a friend who bought Roumeli and got only ten pages into it before deciding she didn't like it. But there are reasons for that. She has a journalism background and she lives in New York. Appreciating Leigh Fermor involves taking the time to savor elevated language and imagery emanating from several sometimes unfamiliar realms of meaning. Sorry, folks, but the dumbing down process stops here.
In the first chapter we have a description of the author's travels in Trace and in particular the area around Alexandroupolis, which, interestingly, is named for the Russian Czar Alexander II and not for Alexander the Great. The focus here is the people he calls The Black Departers, or the Sarakatsans, a mysterious and little-studies nomadic group who some say are descendants of the original Greeks who came into the peninsula.
Then there is a delightful chapter centered on the monasteries of Meteora and the holy but realistic Father Christopher, the abbot of St. Barlaam, who has a few tales to tell about the foreign occupiers and their mindless cruelty and how the monks outsmarted them on a few occasions.
Chapter three deals with the famous difference between Hellenes and Greeks (or Romios) that has been used as an analytic model by many serious writers who take an interest in modern Greece, including Robert D. Kaplan in his Balkan Ghosts. This is the division or polarity existing within every Greek you meet on the streets and it shows the distinct pulls of the Eastern and Western orientations that still abide in the Greek collective consciousness and which give, sometimes, the impression of a split personality. Mention is made of George Soteriades the archeologist who insisted that Romios should be used only in the pejorative sense of a mean, vulgar, and sordid man. But the word has also had its very distinguished defenders.
Also worth noting is the fact that this book contains the very elegant and entertaining essay called Sounds of the Greek World, of which I cannot resist giving a few examples here:
Chios is a cakewalk on a cottage piano. ....Hermoupolis is the filioque. .....The Plaka is a drunken polyphony at four in the morning in praise of retsina and the tune of a music- box perched on a photograph album of faded plum velvet with filigree clasps at five in the afternoon.
Yes, this book is beautiful. Take the time to read and enjoy it.
Rating: 5
Summary: Roumeli
Comment: Patrick Leigh Fermor's Roumeli gives us a glimpse at many ancient customs of Greece that were still practiced at the time of writing. His book is a must read for any one intrested in Greece
 |
Title: Mani (Travel Library) by Patrick Leigh Fermor ISBN: 0140095039 Publisher: Penguin Books Ltd Pub. Date: 31 May, 1984 List Price(USD): $6.95 |
 |
Title: A Time of Gifts: On Foot to Constantinople : From the Hook of Holl and to the Middle Danube by Patrick Leigh Fermor ISBN: 0140049479 Publisher: Penguin USA Pub. Date: 01 February, 1988 List Price(USD): $11.95 |
 |
Title: Between the Woods and the Water by Patrick Leigh Fermor ISBN: 014009430X Publisher: Penguin USA Pub. Date: 01 December, 1987 List Price(USD): $11.00 |
 |
Title: The Violins of Saint-Jacques (Twentieth-Century Classics) by Patrick Leigh Fermor ISBN: 0192818775 Publisher: Oxford Univ Pr Pub. Date: 01 September, 1985 List Price(USD): $5.95 |
 |
Title: A Time to Keep Silence by Patrick Leigh Fermor ISBN: 0140119604 Publisher: Penguin USA Pub. Date: 01 June, 1989 List Price(USD): $6.95 |
Thank you for visiting www.AnyBook4Less.com and enjoy your savings!
Copyright� 2001-2021 Send your comments
