Hyperbole, nothing like it when suitably blatant, creative and outrageous. 

You couldn’t possibly eat one of these, only engage them in a civilized conversation about world affairs, or in a game of chess.

See, from the same book, a similarly improbable yet undoubtedly true tale. 

‘Years ago when I asked Katsimbalis, before going there, what the Sporades were like.  “Wonderful islands!” was the answer.  “Skiathos!  Skopelos! Skyros!  The lobsters in Skopelos are the best in the world, and the biggest!  They’re all over the place.  Why, you see them walking up and down the streets and sitting down at tables – reading newspapers, playing tric-trac, ordering coffees and smoking narghilehs…”‘

Source: Patrick Leigh Fermor, Mani: Travels in the Southern Peloponnese, introduction by Michael Gorra, New York: New York Review of Books, 2006 (1958), p. 303

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