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| Author: Peter Mayle |
Though organized from A to Z, this is hardly a conventional
work of reference. It is rather a selection of those aspects
of Provence that Mayle in almost twenty years there has
found to be the most interesting, curious, delicious,
or down-right fun.
In more than 170 entries he writes about subjects as
wide-ranging as architecture and zingue-zingue-zoun (in
the local patois, a word meant to describe the sound of
a violin), as diverse as expatriates, Aix-en-Provence,
the Provençal character, legends, lavender, linguistic
oddities, the museum of the French Foreign Legion, the
museum of the corkscrew, the origins of “La Marseillaise,” and
a bawdy folklore character named Fanny.
And, of course, he writes about food and drink: vin
rosé, truffles, olives, melons, bouillabaisse,
the cheese that killed a Roman emperor, even a cure for
indigestion. The wonderful accompanying artwork includes
curiosities Mayle has gathered over the years—matchbooks,
drawings, century-old ads, photos, tourist brochures,
maps.
Provence A-Z is a delight for Mayle’s audience
and a complement to any guidebook on Provence, or, for
that matter, France.
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From Publishers Weekly
The author of several books set in Provence, including
the now classic travel tome A
Year in Provence and a
more recent novel, A Good Year, Mayle has once again
trapped the sunshine, the wind and the very lavender-laden
air of the southeastern French countryside in his prose.
The reference-desk title is appropriate if the desk in
reference is that of a librarian at your favorite getaway
inn in Aix or Marseille. This anecdotal encyclopedia
may have been written expressly for discovery on the
shelf of a rented mas, "a collection of agricultural
buildings joined together," and enjoyed over an
afternoon repast of Banon, "armed with a fresh baguette
and a bottle of local wine." Mayle is the self-appointed
pied piper of Provence for Anglophone Francophiles everywhere,
and these entries, from "Accent" to "Zingue-Zingue-Zoun," display
the same conversational style his fans have come to expect.
He includes information about lesser-known sights like
the museum of the Foreign Legion and local food like
bouillabaisse, but the charm of the book is in unexpected
factual gems like "the male goat can copulate up
to forty times a day" found in an otherwise straightforward
entry about chèvre. Mayle writes beautifully of
the seasons—Automne, Été, Hiver and
Printemps—which he shares as his own personal Provence
with the earnestly planning tourist and the dreamy armchair
traveler alike.
© Reed Business Information, a division
of Reed Elsevier Inc. |
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$25.00 (hardcover)
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