Between the Woods and the Water: On Foot to Constantinople from the Hook of Holland [Mass Market Paperback]

Patrick Leigh Fermor (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: January 1, 1995

'Between the Woods and the Water' continues Patrick Leigh Fermor's celebrated epic account of his journey at the age of eighteen, in 1933, from the Hook of Holand to Constantinople. Here he travels down the Danube from Budapest, across the Great Hungarian Plain on horseback, and over the Rumanian border into Transylvania.

--This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

Editorial Reviews

Review

'Beyond cavil the greatest of living travel writers...in this work he is exploring the very furthest boundaries of the genre' -- Jan Morris, The Times --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

About the Author

Patrick Leigh Fermor now lives in Greece with his wife in a house he designed and built. --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

Product Details

• Mass Market Paperback: 256 pages
• Publisher: Penguin (Non-Classics) (January 1, 1995)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 014009430X
• ISBN-13: 978-0140094305
• Product Dimensions: 7.9 x 7.7 x 0.7 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1 pounds
• Average Customer Review: 4.9 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (8 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #548,629 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

32 of 32 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Exquisitely between two worlds, May 2, 2000

By 

Alekos (Cancun, Quintana Roo Mexico) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Between the Woods and the Water: On Foot to Constantinople from the Hook of Holland (Mass Market Paperback)

Like most literary masterpieces this marvelous book has a outer vehicle that develops an inner theme. The vehicle is a journey on foot, horseback and barge across Europe in the 1930's when the author was 19. The inner theme is a resolution of polarities and opposites of all kinds. First there is the overriding polarity of solitude and company. He enjoys spending time with friends and friends of friends at their country homes in Hungary and Roumania and passing hours in their sometimes fabulous libraries but he finds refreshment and spiritual renewal in long solitary walks in wooded mountains and along the banks of the Danube where he meets an occasional deer or golden eagle. He relishes staying with his wealthy, worldly and sophisticated hosts but also enjoys the company of peasants, gypsies and lumberjacks. He likes passing comfortable nights in reasonably soft beds with clean linens but doesn't shrink from sleeping in hayricks or under sheltering oaks. The interplay of past and present are another polarity he weaves into the narrative. His knowledge of history and use of it in this work is both magnificent and enviable. Leigh Fermor is in fact one of the most cultured contemporary writers I have had the good fortune to read. He is a good linguist, a masterful historian and , surprisingly, a knowledgeable theologian. But that is only half the story. He is also a super-macho man of action completely aware of his body and its interaction with the environment. This we know from his activities, almost heroic feats, during WWII, especially in Crete. In the present book he coordinates his mental and physical endowments to produce a gorgeously textured masterpiece of English prose. Sex is not absent from the narrative but it is never described in terms that could be considered even remotely graphic. Acts are kept in the wings while he concentrates on the social, intellectual, and aesthetic dimensions of his relations with women. Unfortunately Amazon.com does not keep an ample stock of Leigh Fermor's works, so I had to purchase my copy from Amazon.co.uk. I may be impatient but my sense of company loyalty is unimpeachable. No?

16 of 16 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Wonderful adventure through history and countryside, June 26, 1999

By A Customer

This review is from: Between the Woods and the Water: On Foot to Constantinople from the Hook of Holland (Mass Market Paperback)

I have recently re-read and completed this book (borrowed from the library!) after having lost my own copy on a plane in Europe over a decade ago. The writing is exquisite, often amusing, as this vigorous youthful traveler - mostly on foot but also on horse, the occasional car, and Danube steamship -- is brought back to life by his seasoned self 50 years later. And, though written in the 1980's, it is sometimes eerily relevant to 1999. A quote, "I stayed the night at a bargeman's tavern in Mohács in order to see the battlefield where Suleiman had overthrown King Lajos: one of history's most dark and shattering landmarks: a defeat as fatal to Hungary as Kossovo to the Serbs and Constantinople to the Greeks." Later, he refers to "the tragic region of Kossovo, where old Serbia, Macedonia, and Albania march." These passages are interspersed with playful romps with Hungarian aristocrats, parties, nights spent with Rumanian shephards, orthodox rabbis and their lumberjack families, and other unforgettable people whose lives were about to be forever changed by World War II and its aftermath. A gorgeous read as was the earlier Time of Gifts and hopefully the last volume through Rumania and Bulgaria to the Black Sea.

11 of 12 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars filling the unforgiving minute, September 20, 1999

By A Customer

This review is from: Between the Woods and the Water: On Foot to Constantinople from the Hook of Holland (Mass Market Paperback)

Patrick Leigh Fermor not only fills the 'unforgiving minute' but describes that experience in a way that transports us to that minute. One line from "Between the Woods and the Water" stays in my mind. "The heat and weight of the summer bore down and not a leaf stirred". Or, how about, "the newly distilled spirit had taken out the peasants like sniper". For a feeling of 'being there' he can't be beaten, certainly not by Ernest Hemingway who tried and failed by appearing too contrived. The writers who achieve this power to transport, as musicians or painters do can let us ignore their presence and I think that is their artistic intention, to merely present (with all their craftsmanship but so it doesn't show). Paul Bowles is such a writer as is Elmore Leonard. But that's another story.