SKU: 92720836699

A Time To Keep Silence

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Description

A Time To Keep SilenceA Time To Keep Silence A wonderful insight into the calm and contemplative world of the monastery from a premier travel writer. From the French Abbey of St Wandrille to the abandoned and awesome Rock Monasteries of Cappadocia in Turkey, the celebrated travel writer Patrick Leigh Fermor studies the rigorous contemplative lives of the monks and the timeless beauty of their monastic surroundings. In his occasional retreats, the peaceful solitude and the

A Time To Keep Silence

A wonderful insight into the calm and contemplative world of the monastery from a premier travel writer.

From the French Abbey of St Wandrille to the abandoned and awesome Rock Monasteries of Cappadocia in Turkey, the celebrated travel writer Patrick Leigh Fermor studies the rigorous contemplative lives of the monks and the timeless beauty of their monastic surroundings. In his occasional retreats, the peaceful solitude and the calm enchantment of the monasteries was passed on as a kind of 'supernatural windfall' which A Time to Keep Silence so effortlessly records.

'The English language is still a superb instrument in the hands of a writer who has a virtuoso skill with words, a robust aesthetic passion, an indomitable curiosity and a rapturous historical imagination' - Observer

'The genius of Patrick Leigh Fermor is a many splendoured thing. Soldier, traveller, writer, Phihellene ... he has already dazzled and delighted ... It is some time since more truth and beauty were distilled into a hundred pages' - Stewart Perowne

'A brilliant book' - Sunday Times

'Delightful ... His book is not only an admirable piece of travel writing; it is also a brilliant piece of human exploration' - New Statesman

'Introspection, history, reportage have their balanced places in a well-written book ... measured and lucent' - Sunday Times

'Patrick Leigh Fermor is a stylish, superb master of words, which he savours like the choicest vintage' - The Times

'What a delight it is to read a book so beautifully and sensitively written' - Observer

'A most successful attempt to portray the reactions of the man of the world (in the literal sense) when confronted with the monastic life' - Daily Telegraph

'Delightful, lucidly written work of introspection that evokes the hardship and the rewards of the solitary life, as well as its beauty' - The Glasgow Herald

'John Murray is doing the decent thing and reissuing all of Leigh Fermor's main books ... But what else would you expect from a publisher whose commitment to geography is such that for more than two centuries it has widened our understanding of the world?' - Geographical Magazine

'A pleasure and an instruction to read' - Irish Times

'Bringing the landscape alive as no other writer can, he uses his profound and eclectic understanding of cultures and peoples ... to paint vivid pictures - nobody has illuminated the geography of Europe better' - Geographical Magazine

SPECIFICATIONS:

Author:Patrick Leigh Fermor - Патрик Ли Фермор

Publisher:John Murray

Language:English

Publication Date:2004

Number of pages:96 pst

Format:Paperback

Width:124 mm / 4,9'

Height:196 mm / 7,7'

Weight:80 g

ISBN:9780719555275

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SKU: 92720836699

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4.2 ★★★★★
Based on 11 reviews
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Diogenes
Whiting, US
★★★★★ 3
Interesting read, but takes some getting used to
I heard about this book on a blog, and figured I'd check it out. It's the rambling tale of a man determined to give you every last detail of everything that might be important to the narrative of his life. Unfortunately, he goes on tangets so often that he doesn't even get to his birth for several chapters, let alone the story of the rest of his life. Along the way, you're introduced to lots of random characters who are (at best) loosely related to the protagonist, but as often as not these tangents are fairly amusing. The writing is pretty dense, and this along with the tangents had me putting the book down fairly often. It's probably ideal for a commuting book, but I never wanted to just sit down and blitz through big chunks of it. Overall it's a very different kind of experience than a novel reader typically gets. It's worth a read for a change of pace, but I can't say it's a life-altering read.
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Reviewed in the United States on March 21, 2013
J
Verified Purchase
J. W. Kennedy
Alexandria, US
★★★★★ 4
Mixed Bag
Everyone should know, first off, that the Dover thrift edition is NOT a graphic adaptation. For some reason, Amazon has attached editorial reviews from the hardcover edition of the graphic novel version to this page. Now, the book itself offers a range of experiences from delightfully hilarious to annoyingly tedious. Lots of the "funny" parts depend on an understanding of 18th-century social mores. I'm sure some of it went over my head but I'm enough of a nerd to have enjoyed most of the drollery. I think... The story is whimsical, told all out of order by a scatterbrained, easily-distracted narrator. Tristram Shandy himself is hardly in the novel at all; aside from narrating it, he only appears momentarily as a newborn infant and then as a boy about 6 years old - and his role in both incidents seems peripheral to the carryings-on of the other characters. Each turn in the story reminds the author of something else, and he turns aside to tell stories inside of stories, each of which are necessary to give the reader some vital "background information" .. with the result that the main story hardly moves forward at all. It takes nearly 200 pages just for Tristram to be born! and even then the reader isn't quite sure it has happened since the conversations and minute actions of the other characters are magnified to such an importance that the narrator's own birth is hardly observed. For the most part this rambling comes across as "quirky and delightful" and the novel flows along quite pleasingly in spite (or perhaps because) of it. The digressions add layers to the story. Except when they don't. The "chapter upon noses" which is a translation of a fictitious(?) Latin work by the great Slwakenbergius, has little bearing on the story. Like most of the book, it builds up to a climax and then stops short of resolution, leaving you to wonder what was the point. It leads nowhere, but at least it was interesting. The same cannot be said of Book VII, which is a sort of travel diary of Tristram (in the novel's "present" time) touring France by post-chaise. Although this is the only significant appearance of Tristram himself as a character in the book, it has absolutely nothing to do with the story/stories he was telling, and it is neither very interesting nor very funny. It serves as nothing but a pointless interruption, delaying the reader for 50 pages before getting to the part we were waiting for: Toby's courtship of the widow Wadman. This last section goes along nicely for a while, and then the book stops. It doesn't end; it just stops right in the middle of a conversation, with the courtship unresolved and most of the reader's questions unanswered. This is perfectly in keeping with the spirit of the entire novel, but I have to admit it's frustrating. I had trouble deciding whether to give this book 3 or 4 stars but I think it entertained me more than it exasperated me, so I'll give it the benefit of the doubt ... and round up from 3.5. It's worth reading once, just for the experience - there's no other book quite like it - and the price of the Dover Thrift Edition can't be beat.
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Reviewed in the United States on September 23, 2010
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Verified Purchase
Lawrentius Verifer
Lake Worth, US
★★★★★ 5
An extraordinary tale of an 18th Century family
Have you wanted to read a book where the author decides to "rip out" one of the chapters, or leaves a blank page for you to 'draw' one of the characters? Would you enjoy a story which takes many chapters before the hero manages to be born? This 18th-Century tale is touchingly told. The characters are real, and fascinating. It's not their fault that their story is frequently and impishly interrupted by outlandish "digressions" on the part of an author so creative that his modern descendants are considered to be Joyce and Beckett, as well as many others. Would you enjoy a chapter on Chapters? About buttonholes? About whether parents and their children are kin to each other? A chapter on curses? Poor Laurence Sterne has so much trouble getting two of his characters down the stairs that he finally calls in a "critic" to help! Advice on reading such an unusual, even unique, book: read the first several chapters, then stop and reread them. Continue that process and soon the book will feel quite familiar, and that's when the fun really starts. The Oxford World's Classics edition follows the first edition of the book, and is preferred. Amazon also offers the fully-annotated edition, the "Florida" edition, in three volumes. A caution about the Everyman hardcover edition: they reprinted a later edition which groups Tristram Shandy into three volumes, not nine. And then they renumbered all the chapters! That's OK unless you read secondary sources that refer you to Book VII, Chap 4: good luck ever finding it.
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Reviewed in the United States on June 4, 2000
M
Verified Purchase
Martin M. Bodek
Fort Morgan, US
★★★★★ 1
A Total Sham-dy
What in the hell was this lunatic yammering about for all those 650 pages? What is the deal with his obession with noses, penises, and hobby-horses, hobby-horses, hobby-horses? Why does anyone consider it amusing when a writer keeps telling you he's going to get somewhere, but never does? Why is it entertaining at all to have blank chapters? Why is that cute? Why is that interesting? Who finds this funny? Who finds anything funny here at all? Why does this book of endless, mindless prattle, blabber, and piffle tickle anyone at all? Who finds digression to be enjoyable in literature? You? Why? Why? Tell me! I checked the ratings on Goodreads. This is what it showed: 5 stars: 33%, 4901 4 stars: 28%, 4064 3 stars: 22%, 3268 2 stars: 9%, 1414 1 star: 5%, 848 Meaning: 95% of these readers are flock-following, digression-loving, hobby-horse riding loonies who have swallowed the Kool-aid. There is nothing here but vacuous thundergunk. Pure, putrid unenertaining garbage. If I would have laughed once - just once - during the reading of this book, I would have given it a whole extra star, but it couldn't even do that. I give him one star for spelling Tristram's name right, and even then, it's a made-up name anyway, so I may have been hoodwinked as well.
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Reviewed in the United States on September 19, 2016
M
Verified Purchase
Michael Harold
West Palm Beach, US
★★★★★ 5
Laurence Stern is still one of the most creative writers ever
This review is not about the words and images inside the book. This is about the fact that, when I removed the book from its packaging, the book's cover had too many creases and bends in it, both front and back, for my taste. Although I do think that Laurence Sterne might have smiled at my response, I don't think the creases were a type of samizdat (think Alexander Solzhenitsyn) added by a disgruntled/creative employee at Amazon. If this doesn't make any sense to you, or seems to be a silly mountain out of a molehill compliant, you will love the book.
WAS THIS REVIEW HELPFUL?YesReportShare
Reviewed in the United States on February 21, 2025

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