The Devil's PicnicThe Devil's Picnic
Around the World in Pursuit of Forbidden Fruit
Title rated 3.8 out of 5 stars, based on 8 ratings(8 ratings)
Book, 2005
Current format, Book, 2005, , No Longer Available.Book, 2005
Current format, Book, 2005, , No Longer Available. Offered in 0 more formatsIn The Devil's Picnic, Taras Grescoe delivers a social history of prohibition as a nine-course meal. Beginning with appetizers and aperitifs and closing with dessert and digestifs, Grescoe delights in challenging the safety-conscious, the temperate...and the authorities. He takes readers on a provocative tour through the forbidden fruits of Europe, Asia, and the Americas, exploring the mystique and aura that surround some of the world's most highly sought after-and often
illegal-delicacies.
Crisscrossing the globe in search of illicit indulgences, Grescoe swills moonshine in Norway and eats malodorous raw milk cheese at a French farm. He hunts for criadillas-bull's testicles served in a garlicky stew-in Madrid and smuggles Cuban cigars into the United States. He chews coca leaves with indigenous people in La Paz and witnesses the same hardy leaf being transformed into cocaine in the backwoods of Bolivia. He draws the line at sipping pentobarbital sodium in Zurich,
Switzerland, where suicide tourists come to legally end their lives.
Unlike most armchair travel, riding shotgun with Grescoe isn't always comfortable. As he pursues his quarry, he looks at regional culture and repressive legislation-from the clandestine absinthe distillation in an obscure Swiss valley to the banning of poppy seed biscuits in Singapore-and throughout the meal, he calls into question the wisdom of interdiction and the motivation behind it. An investigation into the demonized and the vilified, The Devil's Picnic is a delicious journey into
the heart of vice and desire. Book jacket.
illegal-delicacies.
Crisscrossing the globe in search of illicit indulgences, Grescoe swills moonshine in Norway and eats malodorous raw milk cheese at a French farm. He hunts for criadillas-bull's testicles served in a garlicky stew-in Madrid and smuggles Cuban cigars into the United States. He chews coca leaves with indigenous people in La Paz and witnesses the same hardy leaf being transformed into cocaine in the backwoods of Bolivia. He draws the line at sipping pentobarbital sodium in Zurich,
Switzerland, where suicide tourists come to legally end their lives.
Unlike most armchair travel, riding shotgun with Grescoe isn't always comfortable. As he pursues his quarry, he looks at regional culture and repressive legislation-from the clandestine absinthe distillation in an obscure Swiss valley to the banning of poppy seed biscuits in Singapore-and throughout the meal, he calls into question the wisdom of interdiction and the motivation behind it. An investigation into the demonized and the vilified, The Devil's Picnic is a delicious journey into
the heart of vice and desire. Book jacket.
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- New York, NY : Bloomsbury Pub., c2005.
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