Rating
The Pequod Review:
Patrick Leigh Fermor (1915-2011) was one of the finer 20th century travel writers, whose charming books combine thoughtful curiosity with good-natured cheer. The Traveller's Tree is Fermor's first book, and describes his post-war travels in Guadaloupe, Martinique, Dominica, Haiti, Barbados, and other Caribbean islands. More than anything, it is Fermor's perceptive eye and witty turns of phrase that make it an engaging read:
Hotel cooking in [Trinidad] is so appalling that a stretcher may profitably be ordered at the same time as dinner.
[...]
Looking backwards we could almost see, suspended with the most delicate equipoise above the flat little island, the ghostly shapes of those twin orbs of the Empire, the cricket ball and the blackball.
By the way, Ian Fleming was also a fan of The Traveller's Tree; in Live and Let Die, the book is recommended to Bond by M: "'It’s by a chap who knows what he’s talking about,’ he said, ‘and don’t forget that he was writing about what was happening in Haiti in 1950. This isn’t medieval black-magic stuff. It’s being practiced every day.'"