Patrick Leigh Fermor set off as a teenager to make his way across Europe, as recorded in his classic memoirs, "A Time of Gifts" and "Between the Woods and the Water," Later he fought with local partisans against the Nazi occupiers of Crete. "A Time to Keep Silence" stands out among Leigh Fermor’ s various tales of travel and adventure because it is more an inward than an outward voyage. Here Leigh Fermor chronicles his several sojourns in some of Europe’ s oldest and most celebrated monasteries. He stays at the Abbey of Wandrille, a great repository of art and learning; at Solesmes, famous for its revival of Gregorian chant; and at the deeply ascetic Trappist monastery of La Grande Trappe, where monks take a vow of silence. Finally, he visits the rock monasteries of Cappadocia, hewn from the stony spires of a moonlike landscape, where he seeks some trace of the life of the earliest Christian anchorites.
This beautiful short book is a meditation on the meaning of silence and solitude for modern life. Leigh Fermor writes, “ In the seclusion of a cell— an existence whose quietness is only
varied by the silent meals, the solemnity of ritual, and long solitary walks in the woods— the troubled waters of the mind grow still and clear, and much that is hidden away and all that clouds it floats to the surface and can be skimmed away; and after a time one reaches a state of peace that is unthought of in the ordinary world.”

Reviews

"I can't remember when I was so pleased by a group of reissues as the Patrick Leigh Fermor books that the New York Review of Books is putting out...Mostly, the Europe he wrote about is long gone, but the books are as fresh as ever because they're about the spiritual connection between place and person. I would particularly recommend "A Time to Keep Silence," a lovely 1957 book about Leigh Fermor's time spent in a couple of monasteries in France and Italy." --"The Fort Worth-Star Telegram"
"For the past three centuries, British writers have gone on trips to remote areas or exotic places and lived to tell the tale...Patrick Leigh Fermor, 92, has carried this great British tradition into our own time." --"The Wall Street Journal"
"Fermor writes logbooks of discovery, keenly meandering through architecture, music, art, history and the minutiae of everyday life...[His] erudition and courage are matched by his discerning compassion, which shapes the probing character sketches that populate his books, including "A Time to Keep Silence, "which has been reissued by New York Review Books."" --Los Angeles Times"
"["A Time to Keep Silence"] is his shortest book (and to my mind his best)." -Anthony Lane, "The New Yorker"
"A gem of a short book." -"Los Angeles Times"
"Delightful...His book is not only an admirable piece of travel writing; it is also a brilliant piece of human exploration." -"New Statesman" (UK)
"Prose lapidary and evocative enough to please even the hardiest skeptic." -"The Washington Post"
"Introspection, history, reportage have their balanced places in a well-written book...measured and lucent." --"The Sunday Times" (UK)
"A most successful attempt to portray the reactions of the man of the world (in the literal sense) when confronted with the monastic life." -"Daily Telegraph" (UK)
"A pleasure and an instruction to read." --"Irish Times"
"There is only one complaint I can think of making abou