A companion book to Fermor's "Mani, Roumeli" takes readers on a journey that uncovers the inherent conflict of the Greeks' inheritance: a tenuous scholastic link with the glories of the ancient world and the more recent but no less historic Byzantine heritage and legacy of Ottoman domination.

Reviews

"There is only one complaint I can think of making about Patrick Leigh Fermor's books: They appear too seldom. When they do appear, they offer that kindest of pleasures open to a reviewer-the chance of unqualified praise." -"The New York Times"
""Mani" and "Roumeli": two of the best travel books of the century."- "Financial Times"
,,"."Mani" and "Roumeli" remain extraordinarily engaging books. This is partly thanks to Leigh Fermor's ability to turn an insight into a telling phrase ...and partly thanks to his capacity to weave a compelling story out of sometimes unpromising material. One of the best tales of all is the hilarious digression in "Roumeli" on the attempted recovery of a pair of Byron's slippers from a man in Missolonghi, on behalf of Byron's very odd great-granddaughter Lady Wentworth...When you see through all the nonsense about Hellenic continuity, there is, underneath, a much more nuanced account of the ambivalences of modern Greece, its people and its myths (its own myths about itself and us, as much as our myths about it)."-Mary Beard, "The London Review of Books"
Praise for Patrick Leigh Fermor:
"[O]ne 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"