"His greatest book,
Mani, was about a journey through that little-known and, at the time, archaic region....[He] travelled [sic] simply, staying with fishermen and farmers, which enabled him to capture the essence of the region....Almost every page has its own literary tour de force, often with intimidating displays of learning and research mixed with fantasy, imagination and acute descriptions of the scene itself." – Robin Hanbury-Tenison,
Geographical "Patrick Leigh Fermor has written great travel books besides
Roumeli and
Mani, but I like to think that his extraordinary style is especially well suited to the subject of Greece, that the beautiful cragginess and almost blinding brilliance of his prose correspond particularly to that country's rugged, dazzled landscapes. Here Fermor establishes an ideal of travel writing: no one responds to a people and a place with more erudition and sensitivity." – Benjamin Kunkel
"A really beautiful book of travel in an almost wholly unknown part of Europe, among people who still belong largely to the tough simple Middle Ages; and it shows not only their charm and vigor, but the delights which still await the explorer of Greece." – Gilbert Highet
"Mani and
Roumeli two of the best travel books of the century." –
Financial Times Praise for Patrick Leigh Fermor: "One of the greatest travel writers of all time"-
The Sunday Times "A unique mixture of hero, historian, traveler and writer; the last and the greatest of a generation whose like we won't see again."-
Geographical "The finest traveling companion we could ever have . . . His head is stocked with enough cultural lore and poetic fancy to make every league an adventure." -
Evening Standard If all Europe were laid waste tomorrow, one might do worse than attempt to recreate it, or at least to preserve some sense of historical splendor and variety, by immersing oneself in the travel books of Patrick Leigh Fermor."–Ben Downing,
The Paris Review
