Books: Rock Garden of the Gods

MANI (320 pp.)—Patrick Leigh Fermor —Harper ($6).

"When God had finished making the world," say the natives of Mani, "he had a sack of stones left over and he emptied it here." Petroprolific Mani is the middle tine of a twisted three-pronged peninsular fork that jabs into the Mediterranean from Greece's Peloponnesus. About as remote from the 20th century as the people of the Dead Sea Scrolls, the Maniots dwell in a kind of telescopic time capsule that includes Homer but little more than a hint of the Industrial Revolution. Few Maniots read or write. They have no radios, movies or telephones,...

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