A time of gifts

Patrick Leigh Fermor

Published by Penquin, softcover

`Like a tramp, a pilgrim, or a wandering scholar', an eighteen-year-old boy set out, one wet December day in 1933, to walk to Constantinople. This book covers his
journey as far as Hungary.

In that year, when Hitler came to power, adventure beckoned and youth was golden for Patrick Leigh Fermor, as he tramped up the Rhine and down the Danube towards the mysterious beginnings of the East, sleeping now in barns, now in fairy-tale castles, losing his possessions here, showered with gifts there. But there was more to discover on his picaresque wanderings than the freedom and camaraderie of the road: the languages,
arts, landscapes, religions, histories and, above all, the people of a dozen civilizations unfolded before his hungry young wind, sharply outlined before the gathering storm.