Roumeli: Travels in Northern Greece by Patrick Leight Fermor
All travel books are nostalgic: They record memories of a trip that is past, and more than a few lament the way the place they are writing about has changed since an earlier generation of travelers visited, was continuing to change while they were there, and has changed even further since they started writing. The past is another country—one that is always elusive. Roumeli , Patrick Leigh Fermor's account of his wanders in Northern Greece, was published in 1966, so the Greece he writes about from the years before 1966 is long gone for those of us reading Roumeli more than half a century after it appeared. And yet, the book lives. What brings it alive is Leigh obvious affection for the Greeks he writes about and for the landscape through which he moves. Add to that the pleasure of Leigh Fermor's prose. It's hard to think of a writer with a finer style. His beautifully written account will make you want to visit this remembered Northern Greece, to walk the trails he walked...