Fenouil
Parigi Dakar, i Retroscena

In the beginning, it was a spark. Abidjan-Nice, mid-1970s: a bunch of enthusiastic people in makeshift cars and motorcycles ready to battle in a lawless rally, crossing treacherous and distant territories for nothing more than a vague promise of glory. Then comes the ultimate idea: Paris-Dakar, start and finish, almost the only two certainties in ten thousand kilometers of a raid in the Go with God style, and a whole series of other things, including the regulations, to be invented right on the spot, day by day, in the middle of the African desert.
This is certainly the most naive and genuine part of the entire Dakar story: the part that pertains to youth, both its own and of that era. The raw independence of African nations, the new races born out of nowhere, by the dozens; the restless and defiant age of those young Frenchmen, barely more than teenagers, who would race, take risks, love, win, and would also die, as heroes or as fools like in every youth worth its salt, down there in the Sahara. Easy to imagine: this is also the most fascinating part of the entire novel. Then the narrative, to obey its title, gets bogged down time and again in the political machinations that tainted the adventure after Sabine's death. We can define this second phase as the period of awareness, adulthood, for the author and for the race, with the usual sad adornment of pettiness and bitterness.
I reproach Fenouil for evident sins of verbosity; a narrative that in the last hundred pages becomes more and more sticky, monotonous, and that will bore you, unless you tackle it with the zeal of scholars, of aspiring mnemonics. And then, if we exclude the bland epilogue of barely two pages, there is a lack of closure worthy of that name; a grand final bow, the sound of doors slamming, a venting, a farewell, the right words to close the circle. This does not change the fact that “Paris-Dakar, The Backstage” is a mandatory read, given the author and his centrality in the affair. A book that does not lack care in detail, with its specific beauty as an object, contributed by three photographic segments of the highest level.
At the end of this journey (about 360 pages), I find myself impressed by the power of attraction capable of a simple race born almost by chance; how much History, geopolitics, business, crimes, conflicts, and innovation it has absorbed in its path; how many Presidents, dictators, political parties, artists, demonstrators, guerrillas, ordinary people, celebrities and even terrorists have intertwined interests and personal destinies with the Dakar; more than a race “where everything is possible,” a kind of mad dream that has escaped the confines of sleep itself; dark matter, matter of desire, bottomless, and that swallows everything, like desert sand.

“Men wanted for hazardous journey, low wages, bitter cold, constant danger, safe return doubtful. Honor and recognition in case of success.” Ernest Shackleton 1914