{"product_id":"2940169057768","title":"A Handful of Honey: Away to the Palm Groves of Morocco and Algeria (Abridged)","description":"\u003cp\u003eAiming 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.\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003e 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.\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003e 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.\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003e Annie Hawes has legions of fans. Her writing has the well-built flow of fiction and the self-effacing honesty of a journal.\u003c\/p\u003e","brand":"Pan Macmillan","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":47100337717488,"sku":"2940169057768","price":9.31,"currency_code":"USD","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0737\/7593\/9824\/files\/2940169057768_p0.jpg?v=1763670735","url":"https:\/\/shop-qa.barnesandnoble.com\/products\/2940169057768","provider":"Barnes \u0026 Noble (DEV)","version":"1.0","type":"link"}