REVIEW: Zarafa
Jun. 19th, 2011 02:45 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
feather_ghyllZarafa: Michael Allin. Headline 1998.
The author of this absorbing enough book gives us a good deal of context to set this fascinating journey in context, sometimes going off into what seem to be digressions. The link between Egypt and France is fleshed out and we see why and how much exotic animals were fascinating the 'Enlightened' world. So, a giraffe was found - captured further south than she would have been a few centuries ago, her untameable mother killed - and brought up to Egypt, alongside human slaves. The journey across the Mediterranean and up France is related, with more direct historical record available the further north we get.
Like the men who had the responsibility for the giraffe's welfare, the author does start to anthropomorphise the giraffe. Zarafa is a name that he, rather than history, bestows upon her, a holdover from when he intended to write this story as a novel, before the truth (as far as it is known) captivated him during his research. To the French, she had many epithets, such as 'beautiful stranger' (which made me think of the Madonna song, regrettably) and her caretakers talked about her as if she was a young lady. Well, the record merely states that she got used to and trusted humans. The French took to her, but she was a captive pet, treated better than the slaves she had once travelled with.
This is the kind of non-fiction I like to read, with one narrative thread informing me of the broader society in which it is set and nuggets that will stick - I didn't know that giraffes were also known as cameleopards.
The author of this absorbing enough book gives us a good deal of context to set this fascinating journey in context, sometimes going off into what seem to be digressions. The link between Egypt and France is fleshed out and we see why and how much exotic animals were fascinating the 'Enlightened' world. So, a giraffe was found - captured further south than she would have been a few centuries ago, her untameable mother killed - and brought up to Egypt, alongside human slaves. The journey across the Mediterranean and up France is related, with more direct historical record available the further north we get.
Like the men who had the responsibility for the giraffe's welfare, the author does start to anthropomorphise the giraffe. Zarafa is a name that he, rather than history, bestows upon her, a holdover from when he intended to write this story as a novel, before the truth (as far as it is known) captivated him during his research. To the French, she had many epithets, such as 'beautiful stranger' (which made me think of the Madonna song, regrettably) and her caretakers talked about her as if she was a young lady. Well, the record merely states that she got used to and trusted humans. The French took to her, but she was a captive pet, treated better than the slaves she had once travelled with.
This is the kind of non-fiction I like to read, with one narrative thread informing me of the broader society in which it is set and nuggets that will stick - I didn't know that giraffes were also known as cameleopards.
