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Patrick (Michael) Leigh Fermor |
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Patrick Leigh Fermor's life and travel books have earned him comparison with T. E. Lawrence (Lawrence of Arabia) and a reputation as one of the foremost travel writers of the twentieth century. Writing in The New York Times (5 December 1986), John Gross called Leigh Fermor "the preeminent English travel writer of his generation." Leigh Fermor's writing often focuses on areas not particularly well known to American and western European readers, including the Balkans, prewar Slovakia and Hungary, the southern Peloponnese, and the Andes. Leigh Fermor's meticulousness, attention to detail, scholarship, and wide-ranging interests make his books valuable eyewitness accounts of cultures that have changed dramatically or even disappeared since his visits to them.
In Abroad: British Literary Traveling Between the Wars (1980) Paul Fussell defines travel books (as opposed to guidebooks) as "a sub-species of memoir in which the autobiographical narrative arises from the speaker's encounter with distant or unfamiliar data, and in which the narrative--unlike that in a novel or romance--claims literal validity by constant reference to actuality." Fussell's definition not only explains how travel writing conjoins the personal and the literal but also suggests how travel writing reveals as much, if not more, about the traveler than the travels.
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