Honey and Dust

An account of a personal journey and a man's dream of tasting all the honeys in the world.

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After being seriously injured in a hit and run, Piers Moore Ede went to work and recuperate on an organic farm in Italy. There he met a beekeeper, Gunter, who showed him, for the first time, the wonders and magic of the beehive. Battling depression and afraid to face the future, Piers finds a renewed sense of purpose through his work with the bees. Up close amongst the highly organised life of a hive, he realises that somehow honey might be the salve that can help him. Back in England Piers, still only in his mid twenties, decides upon a quest to seek the most wondrous honeys in the world. From the terracotta bee jars of the Lebanon to the clay cylinders of Syria, slowly his personal tribulations dwindle into perspective against the backdrop of the fast-shrinking traditions of the honey-farmers. Hunting wild honey from cliffs with Gurung tribesman in Nepal, and in vast jungle trees with Veddah tribesmen in Sri Lanka, Piers draws close to the very origins of life. But honey itself is the real luminary of Honey and Dust - honey, the wonderful invigorating golden manna that Virgil believed was of divine origin. Honey and Dust is about the world's oldest and purest food.
But it also a personal quest of healing, an attempt to regain a sense of place in the world. Meditative, and keenly observant, it is a book about the joy of being alive, and of the regenerative powers of wild nature.