The Broken Road

Name: The Broken Road
Rating: 4 (7 reviews)
ISBN: 9781590177563

By Patrick Leigh Fermor & Colin Thubron &

Publisher Description

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, a trip that took him almost a year. Decades later, Leigh Fermor told the story of that life-changing journey in A Time of Gifts and Between the Woods and the Water, two books now celebrated as among the most vivid, absorbing, and beautifully written travel books of all time.

The Broken Road is the long-awaited account of the final leg of his youthful adventure that Leigh Fermor promised but was unable to finish before his death in 2011. Assembled from Leigh Fermor’s manuscripts by his prizewinning biographer Artemis Cooper and the travel writer Colin Thubron, this is perhaps the most personal of all Leigh Fermor’s books, catching up with young Paddy in the fall of 1934 and following him through Bulgaria and Romania to the coast of the Black Sea. 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–in the The Broken Road such incidents and escapades are described with all the linguistic bravura, odd and astonishing learning, and overflowing exuberance that Leigh Fermor is famous for, but also with a melancholy awareness of the passage of time, especially when he meditates on the scarred history of the Balkans or on his troubled relations with his father. The book ends, perfectly, with Paddy’s arrival in Greece, the country he would fall in love with and fight for. Throughout it we can still hear the ringing voice of an irrepressible young man embarking on a life of adventure.

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The Broken Road Reviews

4.0

Maria L.

Created almost 2 years ago

“4.5”

teacher.gabi.reads

Created almost 2 years ago

“"One is only sometimes warned, when these processes begin, of their crucial importance: that certain poems, paintings, kinds of music, books, or ideas are going to change everything, or that one is going to fall in love or become friends for life; the many lengthening strands, in fact, which, plaited together, compose a lifetime... This journey was punctuated with these inaudible reports: daysprings veiled and epiphanies in plain clothes." This third book in the trilogy was never completed nor polished the way the previous two books ("A Time of Gifts" and "Between the Woods and the Water") were, for Paddy Fermor died as the project neared completion. And what a project it was! The ambitious eighteen-year old's "Great Trudge" in 1933 was truly something only someone so young and idealistic would undertake: walk across Europe, from Holland all the way to Constantinople. And here's the interesting thing: the book was published after he died as a 96-year-old, having accomplished so much more after his long walk. He became a war hero in World War II, and was the author of other delightful books, always a lover of all people from all cultures and faiths. Paddy speaks in this third and last volume with a voice so funny, so full of life, that it truly feels as if one was listening to a youthful Adonis in the prime of health and vigor. I enjoyed this last book best of all the three. Always humorous, this one showed Fermor at his funniest, by far, and was also the one that seemed the least polished (although the sentences are still marvelously wrought). It also seemed the most realistic, somehow, because of the number of predicaments that he encountered, some of them life-threatening. I did wonder at how lucky and blessed he seemed in the previous two books, to encounter so few travelling headaches. In Book 3, he nearly lost life and limb, encountered a madman stalker, was threatened at knifepoint by a roommate, and nearly fell to his death as he scaled mountain ranges. Despite these events, the innocence of the times showed in the confusion and outrage he felt when he returned to a cafe, to find the bag he left behind had been stolen, or when some Bulgarian peasants charged him money for letting him travel in their wagons despite his obvious injury. To read Fermor is to be his companion as he walks across mountains and plains, sleeping sometimes with less than savory characters (one of the funniest bits was when he innocently took shelter in a house of ill repute, thinking it was a clean inn!), sometimes amongst well-to-do pals. I particularly enjoyed the last part, when he describes spending a night or two in seventeen (!!!) monasteries on Mount Athos, Greece. Despite the best of intentions of travelling every day, he would be "forced" to stay longer for one of two reasons: bad weather, but also endearingly, Fermor had the bad habit of reading Byron or Dostoevsky in bed until it was far too late in the day to travel safely. What a beautiful series! And so fitting for year-end reveries. Fermor, after all, did all of this within a year. He lived in one year more than many of us live in several decades. And this makes Fermor a must-read for everyone who wishes to drink deep of the sweet well of life's waters.”

Mdawn74

Created over 5 years ago

Paul Reece

Created over 7 years ago

“Filled with sadness, loneliness & melancholy this book was nailed on for 5 stars up until PLF’s arrival in Constantinople and the first few diary entries there. Sadly the 90 pages on Mt. Athos ruined this - dull, repetitive and lacking the diversity present in books 1 and 2 not to mention the earlier sojourns in Bulgaria & Romania.”

Chris Christopher

Created almost 10 years ago

About Patrick Leigh Fermor

Patrick Leigh Fermor (1915–2011) was an intrepid traveler and a heroic soldier who is widely considered to be one of the finest travel writers of the twentieth century. After his stormy schooldays, followed by the walk across Europe to Constantinople that begins in A Time of Gifts (1977) and continues through Between the Woods and the Water (1986) and The Broken Road (published posthumously in 2013), he lived and traveled in the Balkans and the Greek archipelago. His books Mani (1958) and Roumeli (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. Leigh Fermor lived partly in Greece—in the house he designed with his wife, Joan, in an olive grove in the Mani—and partly in Worcestershire. In 2004 he was knighted for his services to literature and to British–Greek relations.

Colin Thubron is the president of the Royal Society of Literature. Among his books are The Lost Heart of Asia, Shadow of the Silk Road, and most recently, To a Mountain in Tibet.

Artemis Cooper is the author of the biography Patrick Leigh Fermor: An Adventure as well as the editor of Words of Mercury, a collection of Leigh Fermor's writings. She has written several works of history, including Cairo in the War.