Long-awaited conclusion to revered account of walk across Europe set to come out in 2013
Patrick Leigh Fermor in 2001. Photograph: Thanassis Stavrakis/AP
Readers stranded on the edge of Bulgaria since 1986 by the travel writing great Patrick Leigh Fermor are set to be rewarded at last with the third and final volume chronicling the late author's European odyssey.
Leigh Fermor, who died in June aged 96, was the author of what his biographer Artemis Cooper described as "two of the greatest travel books of the 20th century", A Time of Gifts and Between the Woods and the Water. They trace his journey on foot from the Hook of Holland to Istanbul at the age of "18 and three-quarters", how he travelled "south-east through the snow into Germany, then up the Rhine and eastwards down the Danube … in Hungary I borrowed a horse, then plunged into Transylvania; from Romania, on into Bulgaria", with the second volume, published in 1986, ending as he was about to cross the Danube from Romania into Bulgaria.
Leigh Fermor always promised a final volume, announcing in 2007 that he had even bought a typewriter and was learning to type in order to complete it. "I'm going to finish that book," he said. "I'm going home and I'm going to work really hard."
His publisher John Murray has now announced that it will publish the final volume in 2013, drawing from Leigh Fermor's diary at the time and an early draft of the book he wrote in the 1960s.
"His devoted readership have been stuck midstream, as it were, for over 20 years. A painstaking perfectionist, Leigh Fermor never did finish the final volume though he was working on it up to his death in June 2011," said Cooper, whose biography of the author will be published in September 2012. "Based on the original diary he kept at the time and an early draft of the book written in the 1960s, this book takes up the story, and carries the reader to Constantinople and beyond."
Roland Philipps, managing director of John Murray, called it "a treat to be back, immersed once again in this great pre-war walk across Europe". It is "wonderful for his many admirers that this book will be published," added Murray.
Leigh Fermor, who died in June aged 96, was the author of what his biographer Artemis Cooper described as "two of the greatest travel books of the 20th century", A Time of Gifts and Between the Woods and the Water. They trace his journey on foot from the Hook of Holland to Istanbul at the age of "18 and three-quarters", how he travelled "south-east through the snow into Germany, then up the Rhine and eastwards down the Danube … in Hungary I borrowed a horse, then plunged into Transylvania; from Romania, on into Bulgaria", with the second volume, published in 1986, ending as he was about to cross the Danube from Romania into Bulgaria.
Leigh Fermor always promised a final volume, announcing in 2007 that he had even bought a typewriter and was learning to type in order to complete it. "I'm going to finish that book," he said. "I'm going home and I'm going to work really hard."
His publisher John Murray has now announced that it will publish the final volume in 2013, drawing from Leigh Fermor's diary at the time and an early draft of the book he wrote in the 1960s.
"His devoted readership have been stuck midstream, as it were, for over 20 years. A painstaking perfectionist, Leigh Fermor never did finish the final volume though he was working on it up to his death in June 2011," said Cooper, whose biography of the author will be published in September 2012. "Based on the original diary he kept at the time and an early draft of the book written in the 1960s, this book takes up the story, and carries the reader to Constantinople and beyond."
Roland Philipps, managing director of John Murray, called it "a treat to be back, immersed once again in this great pre-war walk across Europe". It is "wonderful for his many admirers that this book will be published," added Murray.