Verdict: carrot
More of a summary than a review, but certainly a tasty tidbit on this unusual book – which has an impressive series of launches and screenings coming up.
Only a Frenchman could write of receiving a “Proustian shock” as his host for the evening bellows: “O Sarie Maris, is zo over van my hart…”
Monsieur Poussin, around the braai on day 30 of his great trek, had recognised “an old scouting song from my childhood: 212 Sarimares, belle amie d’autrefois… of which no one knew either the history or the meaning”. Being a boy scout has a lot to answer for if it sets a man walking from the Cape to Jerusalem.
Likewise, only a Frenchman could explain biltong thus: “You cut off chunks with a little knife – this itself is already a whole art that speaks to a people, reminding them of rides in the bush, the Boer War, the caravans of voortrekkers – then you carefully bite into the slice of hard meat for fear of reawakening an old ache under a tooth, and you slowly swallow the juice of spiced venison yielded by chewing, and finally the fiber finally gives way between your teeth, taking over your palate. Biltong is the gastronomy of the bush.”
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