Book Beginnings III

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Rose City Reader hosts the Book Beginnings meme.  Here's my latest book:
At Orșova, there was the Danube again. It was nearly a mile broad now, but immediately west it swirled and boiled through the narrow mountain defile of the Kazan - the Cauldron - which is only 162 yards across. Since I had turned my back on it at Budapest, this insatiable river had gorged itself with the Sava, the Drava, the Tisza, the Maros and the Morava, and a score of lesser-known tributaries. A little way downstream from Orșova, in the middle of the river, the small island of Ada Kaleh divided the current. Plumed with poplars and mulberries, the line of the wooden roofs was suddenly broken by a shallow dome and a minaret.
This is from The Broken Road, by Patrick Leigh Fermor.  It's the third in his memoir trilogy about his walking tour across Europe in 1933/34.  At this point, he's entering Bulgaria and will spend the book there, in Romania, and in Greece.  The book is unfinished and stops short of his final goal of Istanbul.

It's a wonderful memoir.  I've been saving the books up to read very slowly.  I can't imagine much better than this trip, which has mostly not been possible since a few years after he took it.  I'm not sure if it could be done today.  And much of the world he describes is gone forever.








Comments

  1. MariaJanuary 15, 2016 at 7:35 AM

    This sounds like an interesting book - it would be great to read his pre-WW2 viewpoints and comments on the scenery around him. Here's my Friday post

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  2. Anne@HeadFullofBooksJanuary 16, 2016 at 12:46 PM

    I am glad you told me it was written in the 1930s because I wondered if my English as broken, not understanding all the text. Ha!

    My Friday Quotes

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