- Hardcover: 240 pages
- Publisher: Methuen Publishing Ltd; First Edition edition (13 April 2000)
- Language English
- ISBN-10: 0413747409
- ISBN-13: 978-0413747402
- Product Dimensions: 21.2 x 13.6 x 2.4 cm
- Average Customer Review: 5.0 out of 5 stars See all reviews (7 customer reviews)
-
Amazon Bestsellers Rank:
932,886 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
- #27 in Books > Travel & Holiday > Countries & Regions > Asia > Indonesia > Borneo
| ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
Did you know you can trade in your old books for an Amazon.co.uk Gift Card to spend on the things you want? Plus, get an extra £5 Gift Certificate when you trade in books worth £10 or more before June 30, 2012. Visit the Books Trade-In Store for more details. |
Product details |
More About the Author
Product Description
Amazon.co.uk Review
If the Renaissance had tulipomania, which has already been explored so elegantly in Anna Pavord's The Tulip, the modern era has become lost in Orchid Fever, as Eric Hansen explains in this exquisite book, summed up in its subtitle of A Horticultural Tale of Love, Lust and Lunacy. Hansen, author of the award-winning Stranger in the Forest, returned to the Borneo rain forest to accompany two American orchid growers in their search for Paphiopedilum sanderianum--the holy grail of orchids, and one of the rarest plants in the world. Whilst searching for the orchid Hansen learnt of the extraordinary passions inspired by orchids, the international intrigue associated with its cultivation and the ineptitude with which CITES (Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species of Wild Fauna and Flora) treated its preservation.
Hansen's subsequent foray into the bizarre world of orchids led him on a global odyssey from Borneo to eccentric orchid conventions in California, obsessive orchid growers in the frozen wastes of the Arctic Circle, shady orchid dealers in Germany and sniffy orchid experts in Kew Gardens, in an attempt to understand the perennial seduction of the orchid. En route Hansen also uncovers a murkier side of an orchid world that illegally traffics in rare species. The world-wide retail orchid business is conservatively estimated at $9 billion annually. The orchid's mixture of beauty, fragility and blatantly sexual appearance lies behind this extraordinary obsession, and Hansen tells his story wonderfully. The book is full of wit, pace and local colour, and has a great eye for the bizarre, as in his discovery of the recipe for fox testicle ice-cream made from dried orchid tuber powder. Orchid Fever is a wonderful book which should on no account be limited to horticulturalists!--Jerry Brotton
Synopsis
In 1993 Eric Hansen led an expedition through the steaming jungles of Borneo to find the world's rarest orchid. Five years later he was still on the trail of the true story behind one of the world's strangest plants and humanity's oddest obsessions. From the Orinoco River to the hothouses of Kew, and the clandestine nurseries of Europe to the peat bogs of northern Minnesota, this is a tale of orchid smugglers, ice-cream makers and visionary breeders; of corruption, murder and moths with twelve-inch tongues; and of the vicious, bizarre world of international plant politics, and the wide range of gentle people whose overriding passion in life is the cultivation of these beautiful, fragile flowers. Funny, weird, poignant and completely unputdownable, ORCHID FEVER is an exhilarating, provocative journey to the heart of orchidaceous darkness.
Inside This Book
(Learn More)
Browse and search another edition of this book.
Browse and search another edition of this book.
First Sentence
There is something distinctive about the sight and sound of a human body falling from the rain forest canopy. Read the first page
Front Cover | Copyright | Excerpt | Back Cover
There is something distinctive about the sight and sound of a human body falling from the rain forest canopy. Read the first page
Explore More
Concordance
Browse Sample PagesConcordance
Front Cover | Copyright | Excerpt | Back Cover
Suggested Tags from Similar Products(What's this?)Be the first one to add a relevant tag (keyword that's strongly related to this product)
|
Sell a Digital Version of This Book in the Kindle Store
If you are a publisher or author and hold the digital rights to a book, you can sell a digital version of it in our Kindle Store.
Learn more
What Other Items Do Customers Buy After Viewing This Item?
Customer Reviews
Most Helpful Customer Reviews
6 of 6 people found the following review helpful
Format:Paperback
Whether you happen to be an orchid lover, or merely a curious bystander, "Orchid Fever (A Horticultural Tale of Love, Lust and Lunacy)" will have you by turns helpless with mirth and seething with indignation, or else simply agog with incredulity from start to finish. For it is, quite simply, an absolutely stunning piece of investigative journalism, dressed up as a tale of personal obsession and eccentricities. Written using plain language and with an outstanding witticism, it makes for compelling reading throughout, whether or not you know anything about orchids, or the orchid-growing and trading communities that it explores.
Chapter by chapter, alternating hilarious episodes with the downright unsettling or just plain unbelievable, Eric Hansen gradually lays bare the seedy underbelly of a world that perhaps few of us realise exists. He reveals an alarming world-wide conspiracy, fuelled by greed, protected and upheld by idiotic international bureaucracy and a network of power politics, which daily threaten innocent lives and legitimate livelihoods as well as vast swathes of natural fauna that they purport to be protecting.
Populated as it is by gentle, likeable heroes, blackguardly villains, utter buffoons and the most outrageously bizarre of characters, it is sometimes easy to forget that this book is factual, so far-fetched are some of the events and scenarios that its author recounts. And yet, this somehow makes the book all the more scary, for occasionally things happen to make you realise that it is not a work of fiction. And at that point, the anger sets in... anger that things should be this way and are likely to remain so, despite the best efforts of some of the book's obvious heroes.
Thoroughly researched over a period of some seven years and never less than fascinating, this book exposes the full and terrifying consequences for anyone who succumbs to orchid fever. It is an essential read for anyone who thinks that orchids are nothing more than beautiful but harmless flowering plants. Or indeed for anyone who has never heard of fox testicle ice-cream!
6 of 6 people found the following review helpful
Format:Paperback
Given the lengths that the author had to go to to get his information, you would have thought this book involved serious murderers, drug trafficers or underworld characters. In reality this book shows the lengths to which authorities, people and nature will go to to protect these beautiful plants. This book is compelling and full of astonishing revelations.
5 of 5 people found the following review helpful
Format:Paperback
One minor moan, which I will get out of the way first ... it reads a bit like a lot of articles strung togather rather than developing like you would espect a book-length study to do. But who cares really? It's a hoot, it's dead interesting, and it's very seldom that it goes off the boil in any way. I really loved it and I totally recommend it. My grandma is an orchid fancier and I really don't know if I'll be able to look her in the eye next time I go over for a coffee!!!
Would you like to see more reviews about this item?
Were these reviews helpful?
Let us know
Most Recent Customer Reviews
Heavy breathing among the Paphiopedilae
"I thumbed through the pages ... Immediately I was confronted with centerfolds showing ... moistened, hot-pink lips that pouted in the direction of tautly curved shafts and heavily... Read more
Published on 9 Jun 2007 by Joseph Haschka
wierd and wonderful
This fabulous book takes you on a magical tour through the wierd and wonderful world of orchid hunters/collectors and growers detailing the incredible passion of these (very... Read more
Published on 25 Nov 2002
The dark underworld of the orchid-growing business
Eric Hansen explores the dark underbelly of the orchid-growing business by travelling the world and meeting the varied, interesting and ultimately nutty characters that inhabit it. Read more
Published on 6 May 2001
An absolutely fascinating read
The sub-title 'A Horticultural Tale of Love, Lust, and Lunacy' sums the book up well. In a wonderfully readable style, Hansen cultivates the shadowy larger-than-life figures of... Read more
Published on 1 Dec 2000
Listmania!
|
|
Look for similar items by category
- Books > Home & Garden > Gardening > Garden Styles > Wildlife Gardening
- Books > Home & Garden > Gardening > Plants > Trees & Shrubs
- Books > Science & Nature > Biological Sciences > Botany & Plant Sciences
- Books > Travel & Holiday > Countries & Regions > Asia > Indonesia > Borneo
- Books > Travel & Holiday > Countries & Regions > Asia > Southeast Asia
- Books > Travel & Holiday > Travel Writing
Look for similar items by subject
Feedback
- Would you like to update product info or give feedback on images?
- I am the Author, and I want to comment on my book.
- I am the Publisher, and I want to comment on this book.
