Posted by sigismund on June 19, 2011, at 3:50:02
In reply to Re: Europe this summer, posted by sigismund on June 19, 2011, at 3:24:57
This, from one of the reviews, is exactly right.
>The Hungary and Transylvania through which Leigh Fermor travels is very rural, dominated by a peasantry still coexisiting with the aristocracy. Transylvania in particular was ethnically diverse with significant populations of ethnic Germans, Hungarians, Romanians, Jews, and Gypsies. These populations were divided also by a variety of languages and faiths. The awareness on the part of the author and readers of fate of these peoples gives much of this book an elegiac quality. Wonderfully written with superb historical digressions and some outstanding descriptive writing about the landscapes, this is book is just a treat. The natural comparison is with the predecessor volume. I think this is the better of the two.
poster:sigismund
thread:988718
URL: http://www.dr-bob.org/babble/social/20110617/msgs/988749.html