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A Time of Gifts

A Time of Gifts

From the Hook of Holland to the Middle Danube
EssaysMemoir
Pages
304
Published
1977
Language
English

Synopsis

A Time of Gifts is Patrick Leigh Fermor's elegiac memoir of the first leg of his 1933-34 journey on foot from the Hook of Holland to Constantinople. Written decades after the fact, the book is less a travelogue than a meditation on memory, the passage of time, and the loss of the Europe he walked through. Fermor's wry, erudite prose turns a simple walking trip into a profound meditation on what remains of the past.

Prose complexity
7/10

Vibe

ReflectiveMelancholicNostalgic

Genres

Essays Memoir Travel

About the author

P
Patrick Leigh Fermor

Patrick Michael Leigh Fermor (11 February 1915 – 10 June 2011) was an English writer, scholar, soldier and polyglot. He played a prominent role in the Cretan resistance during the Second World War, and was widely seen as Britain's greatest living travel writer, on the basis of books such as A Time of Gifts (1977).