•
Rating: That “Dakar '18” prominently displayed in the title of this work is nothing short of misleading. So let’s say it right away: there’s very little Dakar here, mostly limited to a dry summary at the end of each stage, a task hurriedly dispatched as if it were an inconvenience. In the minds of the authors, Piero Batini and Franco Acerbis (creator of the legendary Incas Rally), there must surely have been the idea of a bold experiment: writing a travel book through Peru, Bolivia, and Argentina, using the excuse of the Dakar; an unconventional way to recount the ultimate motor adventure, escaping the rules and routines of what had been written and published thus far. My verdict on this is clear and without appeal: this book is disappointing, a missed opportunity.
The Dakar cannot be an excuse to talk about something else.
Despite a pen that is at times formidable (which makes it all the more infuriating to think of what this book could have been) and a rhythm that is compelling, syncopated like an excellent jazz piece, it’s impossible to shake off the feeling of dealing with a kind of personal diary aimed more at satisfying the authors' egos than the legitimate expectations of the reader. You almost get the impression that Batini and Acerbis have seen so many rally raids in their lives (that is for sure!) that they find the idea of recounting yet another one, the umpteenth, quite tedious. But if already on the third page we are told that “the fortieth edition of the Dakar was great and historically excellent,” then it’s unclear why (apart from brief flashes) its story remains so marginal, peripheral, for the entire duration of the essay.
It doesn’t get better with the illustrations. Let’s draw a discreet veil over self-referential shots, lacking both pathos and pixels, or the dozen photos featuring the car used by the authors, a Peugeot 3008 that often clutters the images and ends up ruining them (a nod to the sponsor is fine, but there’s a limit to everything). What remains is an album of postcards, some beautiful, others less so, very few truly noteworthy. And the Dakar? The Dakar is not here; it’s absent even in this section; the rare images that aim to capture it betray a superficial and cursory execution of a task done in haste. No traces of intensity, of faces disfigured by fatigue, of that “romanticism of effort” which ultimately encapsulates the meaning and secret of the Dakar’s allure, the men and their destiny, before engineering, tools, and the terrain.
Numerous editing errors and an excessive use of ellipsis complete this half-shipwreck.
Dakar '18 is an excellent tourist guide, intimate and passionate, about the extraordinary places of Latin America that hosted the fortieth edition of the competition. If you are interested in knowing all about the history, food, traditions, local flora, and fauna, this is the right book for you. But if, like me, you are looking for the “great story” of the Dakar, you better look elsewhere.
Libreria Dakariana
Title: Dakar '18. The journey. Tenth heaven.
Authors: Piero Batini and Franco Acerbis
Publisher: AM Edizioni
Year: 2018
Pages: 153
Price: 20.00 Euro
Loading comments slowly
