Mani: Travels in the Southern Peloponnese (New York Review Books Classics)

Bring a dictionary. This is a marvelously polysyllabic series of essays loosely bound together as a travelogue of Fermor’s sojourn in the Mani, a region of Greece that even Fermor describes as barren, hot and desolate. The sentences are often elaborately complex; the paragraphs discursive. One digression leads to another before circling back to the Mani. If you loved Fermor,s baroque vocabulary and incredible historical knowledge displayed in A Time of Gifts, you should love this. If you have never before read Fermor prepare yourself for beautiful prose, complicated genealogies and an extensive but erratic history of the Greek world. I recommend it with reservations.

Do you love poetry, or, to be more precise, wildly poetic prose? Do you have a deep-seated love of etymology, so much so that a phrase spoken at random will send you off into a wild linguistic reverie on the history of tongues? Above all, do you have a powerful, almost overwhelming sense of place that puts you in touch with a vast sprawling history before your inner eye? If so, you will absolutely fall in love with this book, as I did. For it is, as Fermor puts it in his Preface, "the opposite of a guide book." And thank whatever gods may be that this is so!Let me give two illustrative examples to whet the prospective reader's appetite:Towards the beginning, Fermor and his future wife Joan encounter a fisherman mending his nets in the early morning and begin consuming a bottle of ouzo. "There is a special delight in this early-morning drinking in Greece." And for the next seven pages one is transported into a fantasia of the past ignited by the conversation with the fisherman and, of course, his ouzo:"...the whole of Constantinople seemed to be rising on a dazzling golden cloud and the central dome began to revolve as the redoubled clangour of the Byzantines hoisted it aloft. Loud with bells and gongs, with cannon flashing from the walls and a cloud-borne fleet firing long crimson radii of Greek fire, the entire visionary city, turning in faster and faster spirals, sailed to a blinding and unconjecturable zenith... The bottle was empty...We stepped out into the sobering glare of noon."Finally, and pre-eminently, let me quote Fermor towards the end as to why he is enraptured by these Greek hinterlands, their people and their language. It is a sense I've had quite often regarding places I've visited, and anyone who has had a similar experience will recognise it instantly:"Animate and inanimate objects, on ikon and church wall and mountain-side, have the same spiritual effect, the same mystical and animistic aura of immanence. No wonder the Greeks of all centuries have populated these hills with a magical fauna and a dramatis personae and a pantheon...These characteristics have a strange effect on the Greek landscape. Nature becomes supernatural; the frontier between physical and metaphysical is confounded."So, Go! Read! Confound your frontiers!

One of the best travel books I have ever read. I had traveled to that part of the world and the book vividly transported me back there. Fermor's writing is hard to classify, but it certainly is not "travel writing" only. In his books one finds geography, painting, anthropology, linguistics, history and psychology. There are paragraphs that poets would be lucky to write. There are words that you may need to check with the dictionary, but they never strike you as a show off way to impress. The details are amazingly jumping from the page, but they never bore me. Since I was born and raised in Greece, I have always attempted to separate the strength of his writing from my one "Greek" reaction. Reading his travel books fron countries other than Greece has cured me of that skepticism.

If you enjoy writing, travel, history, geography, drama and some philosophy, here is the writer. This is not just a travel book but a picture of a time gone by that I, for one, would have liked very much to have been in in the company of the author. To have known Fermor and to have spent some quite time with him would have been a joy. This is the closest we can come to that wish. A man's man who wrote not only with a knowledge of his subject but also of himself. There is always an ironic lightness in these pages. Read the other reviews for more detailed information. I must thank Robert Kaplan for the intoduction to Patrick Leigh Fermor. Poetic writing was Fermor's strength. Poetic in the sense of magic with words. He truly stands alone on the summit. Read and enjoy.

They don't make them like Paddy Fermor any more. Here is an astonishing polymath and autodidact who spins a week's hike in a remote, rural part of Greece into an extraordinary web. Best for the reader who loves Greece, this is so much more than a travel book--his gorgeous descriptions of Greece are mixed with fascinating, detailed digressions into Byzantine history, iconography, the history of Greek religious beliefs, and so on. You will learn so much from this book, while also absorbing Fermor's unparalleled love and respect for his adopted country. I really fell in love with him while reading this, as so many did during his lifetime. A masterpiece.

Although not quite as stunningly written as his later "A Time of Gifts" and "Between the Woods and the Water", Patrick Fermor's books all rate five stars or better The only down-side of his prose is that it leaves me feeling like a comparative dolt. . . .

As far as Greek travel writing goes, it is certainly not the driest. With that said, I did not find this book overly entertaining. Sure, it gave amazing insight to a region of Greece that is often forgotten about, but it could have been much more colorful.

One summer in the first half of the 1950s Patrick Leigh Fermor and ‘wife’ Joan travelled by foot, caique and other modes of transport as they are acquired around the Mani peninsula of the Peleponese. The book is part travelogue, part history of the area and part a detailed account of the myths and culture of the Maniots. From my perspective it was part informative, part a further insight to an extraordinary man, part revealing of the area and peoples and part a dry academic indulgence on various aspects of arcane myth and practices. The chapter towards the end of the book on religious iconography is a good example of such dry academic detail. That said I am glad he wrote in such a manner as it is important such matters are recorded and such words and references are not lost as it ensures people like me can learn of matters that otherwise would be a closed book even if most is forgotten with the turn of the next page, or the link to the next Wikepedia entry. Let’s be honest I have read lots of PLF books and in so many ways they are wonderful but he can wallow in ridiculous self-indulgence and he was an egotist with few peers.

Paddy is at his best when writing about his travels and meetings with people. These sections of the book are excllent. However, hiis learned musings on history and culture mixed in with this narrative contain too many unexplained esoteric references and too much exotic vocabulary. these sections will befuddle you if you do not have a degree in European history and another in the classics.

Well a travel book with PLF writing about Greece was a must buy and was a great read. It lacks the young eyes through the perception of an old man found in his walk across Europe trilogy but is still an interesting and informative book.

Excellent book, well crafted word wise. I have been to some of the places, that PLF has been to. Interesting reflecting, that he had been there, so many decades before. I love travel writers and PLF is amongst the best. Find it very frustrating that his "critics" suggest, that he made it up, as he wrote the books, many years, after his journey. Have orderd part three of the trilogy and will no doubt, thoroughly enjoy it.

Planning to travel a bit in Pelopennese this autumn so thought I'd read up a bit. PLF is a wonderfullyinfectious and evocative writer and this is a lovely book on, I assume, a time gone by. Reading in parallelwith Artemis Cooper's brilliant biography of PLF "Paddy Leigh Fermor: An Adventure" which I also highly recommend.