A review by kingjason
Roumeli: Travels in Northern Greece by Patricia Storace, Patrick Leigh Fermor

3.0

Patrick Leigh Fermor comes across as a master of language, picking up new dialects and quickly getting to grips with made up languages. He also comes across being part of the British Empire, he fully immerses himself in the culture but steps back a bit in his writing. He meets some very interesting groups, some on the verge of disappearing altogether as Greece embraces the modern world, he gets them to reveal secrets about their people and to tell some great stories. When writing these bits there is a lot of passion in the writing, as soon as he moves on to what he is doing or where he is going the writing becomes very clinical, he will happily reel of names of people, places, language that they use and he goes very in-depth with the history of a place. I found it hard going at times, desperately wanting to skip ahead but sticking with it incase I missed something.

The book is an enjoyable read if you stick with it, hearing stories by Uncle Elias is well worth it. There is a wonderful map at the beginning featuring countries that no longer exist, seeing Yoguslavia on a map is quite a shocker. This is the first book I've read by Fermor so it probably just takes a while to get into his work, personally I prefer it when the writer becomes part of the story, I am intrigued to read more by him. This is a good read and would get 3.5 stars if I did half stars....but I don't.

Blog Review> https://felcherman.wordpress.com/2019/07/09/roumeli-by-patrick-leigh-fermor/