Ok ( )

OK, I'm a travel-writing junkie, and also have a mild Europe-between-the-wars addiction. So this saga, finding me in the first months of pandemic lockdown, was a perfect fit and virtual get out of jail free card. Three things about the remarkable author: His audacity, to set off walking across Europe at the age of 18 (although he was endowed an upper-class Brit's self-confidence vis-a-vis the world). His polymathic mind, both insatiably curious and already well-educated. And the amazing detail he was able to recall and describe, writing about this journey several decades later. Or maybe he made the detail up, which wouldn't bother me in the least. A great trip for him, and for me as a reader. ( )

Third of this series - je pense - not the best of the 3 ( )

Virtually flawless; on this evidence, Fermor spent too much time redrafting his already wondrous work. ( )

The final, not quite finished volume of Fermor's trilogy about walking from the North Sea to Constantinople is full of his precise, vivid descriptions of birds, people and places and of his adventures on the roads of Balkan nations, primarily Bulgaria. Sadly, he never finished his account of the journey, which ends near the border between Bulgaria and Turkey. A sample of his fragmentary diary entries from Constantinople ends the journey, but his more complete journal of his first visit to Mount Athos rounds out the book--this section is fascinating; Fermor focuses much more on the personalities of the people he encounters than on the icons or liturgies, but what details he recounts are acute, entertaining and fascinating. ( )