The Broken Road: From the Iron Gates to Mount Athos (NYRB Classics) Hardcover – March 4, 2014

One of the landmarks of travel literature is Patrick Leigh Fermor's three-volume account of his 1934 trek across Europe as a nineteen-year-old. To be sure, though, to characterize the books as "travel literature" may do them a disservice, both because they eclipse almost all other representatives of the genre and because they are much more than a travelogue. PLF mixes in history and ethnology in such an engaging and informative fashion that the books are sui generis.The first two volumes, which I have also reviewed on Amazon, are "A Time of Gifts" and "Between the Woods and the Water". The second one ended with PLF at the Iron Gates, a gorge on the Danube River between Serbia and Rumania. In THE BROKEN ROAD, PLF resumes his journey through portions of Rumania and much of Bulgaria, crisscrossing that country three times. He travels mostly on foot, sometimes sleeping rough; sometimes staying with shepherds, gypsies, or farmers; sometimes with friends he makes along the way; and on a few occasions with the upper crust.One of the more memorable lodgings was at the "Savoi-Ritz" in Bucharest. When he came upon it, he thought it a small hotel, "about my level, in spite of its daunting name." It turned out to be a brothel and entertaining indeed is PLF's account of late-night, after-work dinner with the five girls of the establishment -- one from Bukovina, a Moldavian, a Transylvanian, a German from a town in the Carpathian passes, and a Gagauz from the Dobrudja ("I gazed at her with the reverence of an ornithologist at the glimpse of an Auckland Island merganser"). Another night was spent with six Bulgarian shepherds and four Greek fishermen in a cave along an isolated inlet of the Black Sea on the coast of Bulgaria. Against a crackling wood fire, PLF witnessed several soulful folk dances, fueled by the raki that PLF had carried in his rucksack. At the opposite end of the spectrum, while staying at the apartment of a German diplomat in Rumania PLF went to a dinner party for Artur Rubinstein, where the great pianist played Chopin after which there broke out "dancing and drinking at an uninhibited tempo".What helps make THE BROKEN ROAD and its two predecessors special is that PLF wrote them, contemplatively, forty to sixty years after the journey itself, with the benefit of the intervening years of life lessons and much scholarship. This gives him greater perspective as well as the opportunity to interlace the story of his travels with fascinating information about the history and the peoples of the places he visits. One small example, this one of the hatred between the Bulgars and the Byzantines: "The hatred is epitomized on either side by the act of one Byzantine emperor, Basil the Bulgar-slayer, who totally blinded a captured Bulgarian army of ten thousand men, leaving a single eye to each hundredth soldier so that the rest might grope their way home to the [Bulgarian] czar: a spectacle so atrocious that the czar, when the pathetic procession arrived, died of grief and shock."PLF's prose is rather baroque in its intricacies, and his vocabulary is prodigious. He is prone to elaborate lists and flights of fancy, both of which are evident in his account of when, while trudging along a railway, the Orient Express suddenly appears out of the darkness and whisks past him, setting him to thinking about "its freight of runaway lovers, cabaret girls, Knights of Malta, vamps, acrobats, smugglers, papal nuncios, private detectives, lecturers in the future of the novel, millionaires, arms' manufacturers, irrigation experts and spies."PLF worked on writing the third volume of his pan-European journey off and on between 1990 and his death in 2011, at age ninety-six. He never finished it. It ends mid-sentence, with the youthful PLF still in Bulgaria, about 120 miles short of his goal, which was Constantinople (as he preferred to call the city). As a point of biography, PLF spent several weeks in Istanbul and then embarked on a tour of the Greek Orthodox monasteries on the rugged peninsula of Mount Athos. During that excursion he maintained a detailed diary, the eighty pages of which are appended to THE BROKEN ROAD. It is entitled "Mount Athos", and it can be skipped. The contrast between it and THE BROKEN ROAD and its two predecessors is stark. As keen an observer as the youthful PLF was, the books written forty and more years later are so much richer and more engaging. They transcend travel literature; for me they are literature pure and simple, and they are among the highlights of my reading career.

Even though the history is unknown to me I greatly enjoyed this final book of hid adventure. I learned a lot and enjoyed his comments and descriptions of what he encountered and enjoyed. Truly a time long ago. I am sorry this doctor end.

I was happy to read this final volume, #3, even if published posthumously in less than polished form. I count Patrick Leigh Fermor among my favorite writers ever, and this was a missing piece of his journey. What he experienced walking across 1933-34 Europe was just part of his extraordinary life story and makes one envy that time one could stay with a new family every night just by asking for hospitality. Along the way, new acquaintances began to pass him along to upscale friends in the next town, so he ended up staying with grand aristocratic families by the time he reached Hungary. His description of pre-war European life -- from the humble to the grand -- is especially poignant, because it was all swept away just a few years later. Fermor returned to this area during the war to train partisan fighters on behalf of the British military -- leading to more wonderful memoirs. This volume #3 covers Fermor's time in Romania, Bulgaria, Istanbul, and on legendary Mt. Athos. His literary and classical references are a tribute to British inter-war education and his facility with languages is a marvel. Best of all, there's a new word or literary reference to discover every few pages. Not as tight as his earlier volumes, which he was able to edit to completion, but a delight nonetheless.

This volume was left unfinished and unedited by PLF, but it is just as well written and interesting as the previous two. And it’s almost a fitting end that his journey ends in ambiguity. The scene of him walking through the Bulgarian mountains with a stray dog, and then along the craggy Black Sea coast and venturing upon a group of Greek fisherman, are up there with the greatest and most memorable scenes of this whole trilogy. I’d recommend reading his other works next, which unfortunately contain less of a personal element.

I read all 3 volumes of Mr. Fermor’s travelogue and I loved this one the best. Most of the writing is from his diaries written at the time when he was 19. I learned more about his family and his reason to travel on such an arduous and adventurous trek . It’s as beautifully written and captures more than any other travel writer I’ve read from historic background, beauty of his surroundings and importantly the many and diverse people he befriends on his travels.I highly recommend reading this adventurous youth