Mani: Travels in the Southern Peloponnese [Paperback]

Join a classic adventurer on his travels throughout southern Greece, where he explores remote villages, swims in the Aegean and Ionian seas, and finds history wherever he goes. 

The Mani, at the tip of Greece’s—and Europe’s—southernmost promontory, is one of the most isolated regions of the world. Cut off from the rest of the country by the towering range of the Taygetus and hemmed in by the Aegean and Ionian seas, it is a land where the past is still very much a part of its people’s daily lives.

Patrick Leigh Fermor, who has been described as “a cross between Indiana Jones, James Bond, and Graham Greene,” bridges the genres of adventure story, travel writing, and memoir to reveal an ancient world living alongside the twentieth century. Here, in the book that confirmed his reputation as one of the English language’s finest writers of prose, Patrick Leigh Fermor carries the reader with him on his journeys among the Greeks of the mountains, exploring their history and time-honored lore.

Maniis a companion volume to Patrick Leigh Fermor’s celebratedRoumeli: Travels in Northern Greece. His greatest book,Mani, was about a journey through that little-known and, at the time, archaic region….[He] travelled [sic] simply, staying with fishermen and farmers, which enabled him to capture the essence of the region….Almost every page has its own literary tour de force, often with intimidating displays of learning and research mixed with fantasy, imagination and acute descriptions of the scene itself. — Robin Hanbury-Tenison,Geographical

Patrick Leigh Fermor has written great travel books besidesRoumeliandMani, but I like to think that his extraordinary style is especially well suited to the subject of Greece, that the beautiful cragginess and almost blinding brilliance of his prose correspond particularlƒ˝