Michael Allin

The book is subtitled: A Giraffe’s True Story, From Deep in Africa to the Heart of Paris.

In October 1826 a ship arrived at Marseilles carrying the first giraffe ever seen in France. She was a gift from the Ottoman Viceroy of Egypt to the King of France; a politically-motivated offering to ensure a powerful ally. Zarafa had already travelled over 1,000 miles to that point, but still needed to get to Paris. Eventually it was decided that the best approach would be to have her walk the 550 miles from Marseille to Paris, where the King awaited the presentation of this extraordinary gift.

Allin did exhaustive, and difficult, research. Many of those who were responsible for capturing and transporting the exotic “camelopard” were illiterate; crude or inaccurate translations further muddied the story. More importantly, the kinds of detailed records that Allin needed to confirm the giraffe’s itinerary (and to flesh out the story) – bills of sale for feed and lodging, for example – were long since destroyed as unimportant. Still, Zarafa was such a sensation in France that her presence had a wide-ranging effect – ladies had their hair coiffured a la Girafe (piled so high they had to ride on the floors of their carriages), children ate giraffe-shaped gingerbread cookies, towns along the giraffe’s route named streets and squares in her honor. She was, indeed a celebrity.

So the book should have been fascinating and interesting to someone like me – a lover of natural history as well as world history. My assumptions were wrong. The sections that dealt with the difficulties, inventive solutions and plain delight of Zarafa’s actual journey were the most interesting to me. On the other hand, Allin’s book bogged down in details of the politics and changing military powers of the time. In total, I thought it was okay. I’m glad I learned about this tiny little detail of history, but I’m not telling everyone to run out and read it.
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