Traces the author's Kundera-inspired spiritual quest for tranquility among the ruins and vistas of southern France's Haute-Auvergne, a journey he shared with a humble donkey companion, Gribouille, that enabled him to reflect on a wide range of disciplines from literature and science to the universality of nature.
"The demon of speed is often associated with forgetting, with avoidance … and slowness with memory and confronting," observes Milan Kundera in his novelSlowness. With that purpose in mind—a search for slowness and tranquility—Andy Merrifield sets out on a journey of the soul with a friend's donkey, Gribouille, to walk amid the ruins and spectacular vistas of southern France's Haute-Auvergne. As Merrifield contemplates literature, science, truth, and beauty amid the French countryside, Gribouille surprises him with his subtle wisdom, reminding him time and again that enlightenment is all around us if we but seek it.
