Continuing the epic foot journey across Europe begun in A Time of Gifts

The journey that Patrick Leigh Fermor set out on in 1933—to cross Europe on foot with an emergency allowance of one pound a day—proved so rich in experiences that when much later he sat down to describe them, they overflowed into more than one volume. Undertaken as the storms of war gathered, and providing a background for the events that were beginning to unfold in Central Europe, Leigh Fermor's still-unfinished account of his journey has established itself as a modern classic. Between the Woods and the Water , the second volume of a projected three, has garnered as many prizes as its celebrated predecessor, A Time of Gifts .

The opening of the book finds Leigh Fermor crossing the Danube—at the very moment where his first volume left off. A detour to the luminous splendors of Prague is followed bya trip downriver to Budapest, passage on horseback acrossthe Great Hungarian Plain, and a crossing of the Romanian border into Transylvania. Remote castles, mountain villages,monasteries and towering ranges that are the haunt of bears, wolves, eagles, gypsies, and a variety of sects are all savoredin the approach to the Iron Gates, the division between the Carpathian mountains and the Balkans, where, for now, the story ends.

帕特里克•莱斯•弗莫尔（Patrick Leigh Fermor，1915—2011），爱尔兰裔，出生于一个英格兰上流社会家庭，他的父亲是知名的地质学家。弗莫尔是一位勇敢的旅行者，也被誉为是二十世纪英国最优秀的旅行作家之一。弗莫尔在结束自己的学校生涯后，于18岁那年只身出走，逃离了他所处的上流社会以及循规蹈矩的生活。他徒步穿越了欧洲，在欧洲各地游历和生活。在第二次世界大战期间，他应征入伍加入了爱尔兰卫队，在阿尔巴尼亚战斗；他还参与了英国特别行动处（SOE）突袭德占克里特岛的行动，俘虏了德军驻克里特岛的指挥官海因里希•克莱佩将军。他因此被授予了“优质服务勋章”（DSO）和大英帝国官佐勋章（OBE）。战后，他与他未来的妻子琼•蒙赛尔周游巴尔干和希腊，并定居希腊开始写作。2011年，弗莫尔与世长辞。