A review by mattroche
A Time of Gifts: On Foot to Constantinople: From the Hook of Holland to the Middle Danube by Patrick Leigh Fermor

5.0

A brilliant story by a type of man that simply does not exist any longer about a world in our recent past that no longer exists. Classically trained, well-read, erudite, and curious, our protagonist narrates a journey by foot through a barely post-feudal Europe of farms and manors that is looking down the barrel of the modern world.

His prose reflects incredible range, suggesting a bookish scholar huddled in his library amid Horace and Shakespeare, yet his story is one of the wandering storyteller - a man of action and of the people. The juxtaposition is unique and compelling.