Annie Hawes

A small stone house deep among the olive groves of Liguria, going for the price of a dodgy second-hand car. Annie Hawes and her sister, on the spot by chance, have no plans whatsoever to move to the Italian Riviera but find naturally that it's an offer they can't refuse. The laugh is on the Foreign Females who discover that here amongst the hardcore olive farming folk their incompetence is positively alarming. Not to worry: the thrifty villagers of Diano San Pietro are on the case, and soon plying the Pallid Sisters with advice, ridicule, tall tales and copious hillside refreshments ...

Extra Virgin

During the course of Annie Hawes' new book, local culinary superstar, Ciccio, gradually takes over as Annie's constant companion. How irresistible is a man who first demonstrates his affection and esteem by inviting her into his vineyard to help himmix up cow manure, which she spends the afternoon slapping onto an old pizza oven to improve its insulation, before driving her at terrifying speed to a Herbie Hancock concert? But even with Ciccio's help, the everyday life of Ligurian folk never seems to lose its surreal edge for Annie. How long does she have to stay at Diano San Pietro before it all becomes normal run-of-the-mill stuff and ceases to amaze her? Will she ever manage to go native?

Ripe for the Picking

Aiming to track down a small oasis town deep in the Sahara, Annie Hawes leaves her home in the olive groves of Italy and sets off along the south coast of the Mediterranean. This title follows her journey, where she discovers that life at a date-farming oasis is not so simple and uncomplicated as she has imagined.

Away to the Palm Groves of Morocco and Algeria

A Handful of Honey

All Annie Hawes knows of distant Calabria is that it's way down in the toe of the boot of Italy, and that it's a wild, unruly and poverty-stricken place. Or so she is told -Annie has lived in her village in Liguria long enough now to take the locals' opinions with a big pinch of salt. It's time she met her fiance Ciccio's extended family anyway, so leaving her beloved cottage and olive groves behind, Annie embarks on a new adventure to the south of Italy. It's going to be another steep learning curve in getting to grips with the intricacies of Italian rural life.

A Calabrian Homecoming

Journey to the South

Ever since Annie got together with Ciccio, his Calabrian family have spoken of their homeland as an earthly paradise, of wild nights dancing the tarantella, of almond milk sold fresh from roadside stalls, of honey cakes and amaro made from wild liquorice roots... Now, at last, Annie and Ciccio are travelling down to see the ancestral home and extended family for themselves, along with a bunch of vocal and lively de Gilios who don't want to miss out on the fun. Will everything Annie has learnt in her years among the Ligurians stand her in good stead among the Calabresi? Or is she in for another steep learning curve in the intricacies of Italian rural life?

Aiming 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. 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. 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. Annie Hawes has legions of fans. Her writing has the well-built flow of fiction and the self-effacing honesty of a journal.

Annie Hawes

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