Zarafa: A Giraffe's True Story from Deep in Africa to the Heart of Paris - Softcover

Allin, Michael

3.59

611 ratings by Goodreads

9780965645362: Zarafa: A Giraffe's True Story from Deep in Africa to the Heart of Paris

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0965645363 ISBN 13: 9780965645362

Publisher: Walker Co, 1998

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Book by Allin, Michael

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Review:

Zarafa was a gentle 19th-century giraffe, a simple animal whose life was dictated by the tumultuous times around her. From the African savanna where she was caught and tamed as an infant, Zarafa was shipped down the Nile--along with the meat of her mother and several hundred human slaves--to the shores of the Mediterranean Sea. From there she sailed on to France, a gift from Muhammad Ali, the "Renaissance Barbarian" viceroy of Egypt, intended to distract King Charles X while Egyptian forces invaded Greece. As political ploy, it didn't work. But as ambassador from an exotic land, this odd animal captivated the French people for almost two decades, as she lived out her life as part of the royal menagerie.

Michael Allin intertwines natural history with a brutal chapter in the history of civilization, augmenting the clarity of both. This story of one docile animal contrasts sharply with those of the human profiteers, warmongers, and interlopers who ultimately decide her fate. But Zarafa's otherworldly charm also helps us to understand the intrigue that led Napoleon to bring not only his troops, but a small army of European intellectuals to study all aspects of Egyptian culture and history, in the invasion that sets up her story. --Lauran Cole Warner

From the Back Cover:

It was the Age of Enlightenment.

And in Paris, a gentle, wide-eyed stranger was all the rage....

In 1826, a twelve-foot giraffe, captured in the Sudan, shipped down the Nile, carried across the Mediterranean in a ship's hold, was now walking across France. A gift from Muhammed Ali, the most powerful man in Africa, this "beautiful stranger" would become an object of adoration in France. But in this compelling, beautifully rendered book, Michael Allin looks beyond the fairy tale to reveal the complex web of politics, culture, religion, and greed that fueled the phenomenon of the giraffe called Zarafa.

Opening an exotic window on the early nineteenth century, brilliantly capturing what it is like to see something for the very first time, Zarafa weaves a captivating tale of nations and nature, of colorful scoundrels and dangerous rulers -- and of a remarkable animal that charmed a nation, bribed a leader, and brought two very different worlds together.

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