Travellers Tales
Patrick Leigh Fermor A Time of Gifts and Between the Woods and the Water (both Penguin). In 1934 the young Leigh Fermor started walking from Holland to Turkey, reaching Hungary in the closing chapter of A Time of Gifts . In Between the Woods and the Water the gypsies and rusticated aristocrats of the Great Plain and Transylvania are superbly evoked. Lyrical and erudite. Ruth Gruber Jewish Heritage Travel: A Guide to Central and Eastern Europe (Jason Aronson). The most comprehensive guide to Jewish sights in Hungary. Brian Hall Stealing from a Deep Place (Heinemann). In 1982 Hall cycled through Hungary, Romania and Bulgaria and came up with this engaging portrayal of rural life in southeastern Europe. The account of the several months he spent in Budapest is particularly absorbing. Gyula Illyes People of the Puszta (Corvina, UK o/p). An unsentimental, sometimes horrifying immersion in the life of the landless peasantry of prewar Hungary, mainly in Transdanubia. Illyes, one of Hungary's greatest twentieth-century writers, was born into such a background, and the book breathes authenticity. Highly recommended. Claudio Magris Danube (Collins Harvill). Magris undertakes an epic voyage along the course of Europe's most romantic river, blending travel narrative, history and anecdote to wonderful effect. Rightly proclaimed as one of the great travel books of recent years. Imre Mora Budapest Then and Now (New World Publishing, Budapest). A personal and very informative set of vignettes of the capital, past and present. Walter Starkie Raggle-Taggle (John Murray/Transatlantic Arts o/p). The wanderings of a Dublin professor with a fiddle, who bummed around Budapest and the Plain in search of gypsy music in the 1920s. First published in 1933 and last issued in 1964; a secondhand bookshop perennial.
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