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Tales from the Torrid Zone: Travels in the Deep Tropics

by: Alexander Frater

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Binding: Hardcover
Dewey Decimal Number: 910.913
EAN: 9780679408710
Edition: First Edition. states
ISBN: 0679408711
Label: Knopf
Languages: EnglishOriginal LanguageEnglishUnknownEnglishPublished
Manufacturer: Knopf
Number Of Items: 1
Number Of Pages: 400
Publication Date: March 06, 2007
Publisher: Knopf
Release Date: March 06, 2007
Studio: Knopf

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Editorial Review:From one of the most celebrated travel writers at work today—a vibrantly observant, witty, utterly captivating account of a lifetime’s worth of travel between the Tropics of Cancer and Capricorn.Part memoir, part travelogue, all passionate appreciation, Tales from the Torrid Zone begins in Iririki, Alexander Frater’s birthplace. On this tiny island in the South Seas republic of Vanuatu, his grandfather, a Presbyterian missionary from Scotland, converted the inhabitants, his father ran the hospital and his mother built its first schoolhouse in their front garden. And it was on Iririki where, on the eve of his sixth birthday, Frater fell victim to “le coup de bamboo . . . a mild form of tropical madness for which, luckily, there is no cure,” and which has compelled him, again and again, to return to the “seeding, breeding, buzzing, barking, fluttering, squawking, germinating, growing” deep tropics. His travels take him to nearly all of the eighty-eight countries encompassed by this remarkable, steamy swath of the world. He delves deeply into the history and politics of each nation he visits, and into the lives of the inhabitants, and of the flora and fauna. He is, at once, tourist, explorer and adventurer, as fascinated with—and fascinating about—the quotidian as he is with the extraordinary. But certainly, he does not lack for the extraordinary: dining with the Queen of Tonga in a leper colony; making his way across tropical Africa—and two civil wars—in a forty-four-year-old flying boat; delivering a new church bell to a remote Oceanian island. From Fiji to Laos, Mexico to Peru, Senegal to Uganda, Taiwan to Indonesia, Frater gives us a richly described, wonderfully anecdotal, endlessly surprising picture of this diverse, feverish, languorously beautiful world—as much a state of mind as it is a geographical phenomenon.

Customer Reviews

Average Rating: out of 5 stars

Rating:

- An ideal read to warm a reader in a frigid winter
Tales from the Torrid Zone is an eclectic series of yarns than span the centuries before the voyages of Ferdinand Quiros to the late 1990s and circle the equator. Its focus is however mainly in the Pacific and builds upon the childhood experiences of the author to provide insights into the history of the myriad of islands that support as many cultures. Although offspring of Presbyterian missionaries/doctors he approaches the impact of this unsympathetic facet of European culture with an unbiased ... Read More

Rating:

- Very disappointed
I bought this book on an impulse (the premise seemed intriguing) and I have to say I have not enjoyed it very much. I am on the last 20 pages now and it has been really hard going.

The problem is with how the book is structured. For some reason the author chose to combine various vignettes together and seemingly randomly group them in chapters. There is no flow of narrative, no characters to interest the reader, no feeling for the place where the author is at a particular moment, no context, ... Read More

Rating:

- Pleased a hard-to-please reader
I am generally turned off by books with coconut palms featuring too prominently on their cover -- they tend to be full of self-congratulation for finding a perfect spot to relax, and reading about other people sitting on the beach drinking funny-colored drinks is even more awful than sitting there alongside them. But after a recent trip to Fiji, I wanted to learn more about it, and grabbed this book after learning the author had actually grown up in Melanesia.

This rarely happens, but maybe ... Read More

Rating:

- Didn't like
Somehow this book simply didn't appeal to me. It meanders all over the place, with no dates so you're often left to guess the chronology. Occasional reminiscences about bygone missionaries, their wives, church bells and so on. Not a travel book by any means. Although to be fair, the parts about flying boats and tropical diseases were quite interesting. If you are interested in the South Pacific, I'd reccomend as light fare "The Sex Lives of Cannibals: Adrift in the Equatorial Pacific" by J. Maarten Troost ... Read More

Rating:

- Wandering through the tropics
My first reaction to Frater's "Tales" was mildly negative. He offers digressions within digressions, often jump cutting from place to place with only the mildest narrative logic. After a while, though, I adjusted to the pace and style and became thoroughly engrossed with his account of a life-long passion for the tropics. The book is filled with interesting detail, and thoughtful musings on a wide variety of subjects. I would love to travel with Frater, and reading this book is the next best thing.

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