My report from the rebel-encircled banquet of François Bozizé, president of the Central Africa Republic, is in the July/August Foreign Policy.
Filed under: Foreign Policy, Central African Republic
1 July 2010 • 11:24 am 0
Bibliophilia in Zimbabwe
Originally appeared in the Summer 2010 issue of Bookforum.
End Papers
A traveler through Zimbabwe nearly a decade ago recalls how hyperinflation made a penniless student book-rich.
GRAEME WOOD
In 1922, the German mark was shedding value so fast that anyone who visited the country holding a stable foreign currency could live like a kaiser. Ernest Hemingway crossed from France into the German town of Kehl and saw that economics was not wasted on the young. Students had figured out that their francs could take them a long way across the border. “This miracle of exchange makes a swinish spectacle where the youth of the town of Strasbourg crowd into the German pastry shop to eat themselves sick and gorge on fluffy, cream-filled slices of German cake at 5 marks the slice. The contents of a pastry shop are swept clear in half an hour.” Read the rest of this entry »
