New York Review Books

of Transylvania, the wild majesty of the Danube itself as it swept through gorge, marsh and forest towards the Black Sea. Before we join him on his journey we must pause for contemplation ourselves, because it is not exactly the Paddy Leigh Fermor we see at Esztergom who is the author of this...

Spain has produced two books that changed world literature: Don Quixote and Lazarillo de Tormes, the first picaresque novel ever written and the inspired precursor to works as various as Vanity Fair and Huckleberry Finn. Banned by the Spanish Inquisition after publication in 1554, Lazarillo was...

INTRODUCTION Envy is the writer's sin, as everyone knows, but there can be few writers in the English-speaking world who resent Patrick Leigh Fermor's preeminence as one of the great prose stylists of our time. He has no rivals, and so stands beyond envy. His literary genre is difficult to...