Product Description

Aiming to track down a small oasis town deep in the Sahara, some of whose generous inhabitants came to her rescue on a black day in her adolescence, Annie Hawes leaves her home in the olive groves of Italy and sets off along the south coast of the Mediterranean.

Travelling through Morocco and Algeria she eats pigeon pie with a family of cannabis farmers, and learns about the habits of djinns; she encounters citizens whose protest against the tyrannical King Hassan takes the form of attaching colanders to their television aerials - a practice he soon outlaws - and comes across a stone-age method of making olive-oil, still going strong. She allows a ten-year-old to lead her into the fundamentalist strongholds of the suburbs of Algiers - where she makes a good friend.

Plunging southwards, regardless, into the desert, she at last shares a lunch of salt-cured Saharan haggis with her old friends, in a green and pleasant palm grove perfumed by flowering henna: once, it seems, the favourite scent of the Prophet Mohammed. She discovers at journey's end that life in a date-farming oasis, haunting though its songs may be, is not so simple and uncomplicated as she has imagined.

Annie Hawes has legions of fans. Her writing has the well-built flow of fiction and the self-effacing honesty of a journal.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #43116 in Books
• Published on: 2008-04-04
• Original language: English
• Binding: Paperback
• 406 pages

Real Travel
'A Handful of Honey is both sensitively and beautifully written, but, above all, it's a great read.'

Wanderlust
'`Hawes' eye for detail brings a range of cultures vividly to life and she doesn't flinch at examining their complexities.'

Adventure Travel
'The narrative unfolds with acute observation of people and place, self awareness and often great humour.'

Customer Reviews

An intriguing voyage of discovery
At the age of sixteen Annie Hawes was deported from Portugal and sent home to England. On the way, she was adopted by a family of Algerians heading for Paris, who came from Timimoun in Algeria, a date-farming oasis deep in the Sahara. Years later, when two friends ask her to join them on a trip through Morocco and Algeria, Annie decided to go, and to seek out her old friends from Timimoun; this book is the outcome. Annie Hawes writes in an engaging, confessional style - familiar to fans of her first book Extra Virgin - and her grasp of history and politics, particularly in relation to the Islamic world, is impressive without ever sounding pedantic. She travels close to the ground, describing what she sees with affection and an open mind, but her wry sense of humour allows her to pass judgment in the lightest of ways. When you read this book you enjoy a veritable feast in every way.

Sticky title, great book!
I loved Annie Hawes earlier books on Italy, and having just got back from Morocco myself, I got hold of this one as soon as it came out. She clearly relished her time in North Africa. Handful of Honey is a kaleidoscope of fascinating characters and quirky encounters, each giving some new insight into North African reality. She portrays a lively, bustling world of colourful individuals with senses of humour as acute as her own. There are holy saints and dangerous djinns; there are ordinary, everyday people doing their best to make ends meet, Maghreb style; there are many hints at a long colonial history, as well as a noble pre-colonial past. There are also many deliciously spicy foodstuffs, prepared in extraordinary ways and in unlikely places: and there is much intriguing outer wear. (I laughed my head off at the scene where she attempts to don the hijab.) Hawes' great strength is her ability to empathize with anyone and everyone she encounters; from a cannabis-farming mother in the Moroccan Rif to university radicals in Algeria, from share-cropping date growers in a Saharan oasis to nomad blacksmiths in the Grand Erg mountains. A great book, which takes the reader deep behind the scenes of the usual facile stereotypes of Islam.

A refreshing and very funny read, and a book that will truly inspire you.
For anyone who would love to escape humdrum rainy Britain for warmth, sunshine and a totally different, unknown culture - but don't quite dare - this is it. Smell the spices, taste the food, live the sun-drenched landscapes and the shady courtyards all the way from the Mediterranean to the Sahara, enjoy the great company of Annie and the wonderful people she meets as she travels all across Morocco and Algeria on a shoestring. Everyone there seems happy to take an unknown wanderer (or three) into their hearts and their homes, right from day one - even if she and her companions don't quite know which is the correct hand to eat with, can't manage to crouch politely on their haunches throughout a whole meal, or follow the intricacies of Ramadan protocol - and don't even realize that a "thousand-star hotel" is a euphemism for sleeping rough under desert skies!
Annie Hawes is honest, affectionate and humourous, and shares with the reader everything she learns as she travels, with never a false note of whimsy or patronage. By the end of the book you feel you have gone through so much with her, so many hilarious or scary moments, so many eye-openers about local life, attitudes, history, traditions - many of them completely contradicting the ideas she (and I) had about life under Islam - that you feel as if you were there yourself, and she is an old friend you've always known. Great book! Buy it.