- Hardcover: 400 pages
- Publisher: Picador (21 May 2004)
- Language English
- ISBN-10: 0330375288
- ISBN-13: 978-0330375283
- Product Dimensions: 23.4 x 16 x 3.8 cm
- Average Customer Review: 5.0 out of 5 stars See all reviews (1 customer review)
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Amazon Bestsellers Rank:
1,036,754 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
- #5 in Books > Travel & Holiday > Countries & Regions > Australia & New Zealand > Vanuatu
- #54 in Books > Science & Nature > Biological Sciences > Animal Sciences > Habitats > Tropical
Tales from the Torrid Zone: Travels in the Deep Tropics
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More About the Author
Product Description
Review
"Lyrical [and] moving. . . . Part memoir, part travel yarn, a hymn to the solar lands." --"The New York Times Book Review"
"Entertaining. . . . This world is literally teeming with natural wonders, local characters, and wild stories." --"The" "Boston Globe"
"A book to treasure on many levels. . . . Be prepared to be fascinated."
--"The Washington Times"
'Fascinating. . . . A diverting, loose-limbed tour of the earth's hot zones. . . . Mr Frater, a genial tour guide and a stylish writer, makes excellent company." --"The New York Times" --This text refers to the Paperback edition.
"Entertaining. . . . This world is literally teeming with natural wonders, local characters, and wild stories." --"The" "Boston Globe"
"A book to treasure on many levels. . . . Be prepared to be fascinated."
--"The Washington Times"
'Fascinating. . . . A diverting, loose-limbed tour of the earth's hot zones. . . . Mr Frater, a genial tour guide and a stylish writer, makes excellent company." --"The New York Times" --This text refers to the Paperback edition.
Product Description
Part memoir, part travelogue, "Tales from the Torrid Zone" is rooted in Alex Frater's birthplace, the tiny tropical republic of Vanuatu where his father ran its hospital and his mother, in her front garden, built its first school. From this obscure South Seas group he ranges over the hot, wet, beautiful swathe of the world that has haunted him ever since: he dines with a tropical queen in a leper colony, makes his way across tropical Africa (and two civil wars) in a 44-year-old flying boat, delivers a new church bell to a remote Oceanian island and visits scores of countries to learn about their history, politics, medicine, flora and fauna (including the remarkable role of the coconut in tropical life). But, as becomes plain, the torrid zone is not just a geographical phenomenon, it is also a state of mind.
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Most Helpful Customer Reviews
27 of 29 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
Another great read,
By A Customer
This review is from: Tales from the Torrid Zone: Travels in the Deep Tropics (Hardcover)
I am a keen reader of travel literature and have really enjoyed Frater's previous books, 'Beyond the Blue Horizon' and 'Chasing the Monsoon'. 'Tales from the Torrid Zone' is his best to date - an evocative account of his life and travels through different tropical regions. Sometimes you can feel the heat and colour of the tropics reaching for you from the page. I would recommend this to anyone with an interest in travel.
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Most Helpful Customer Reviews on Amazon.com (beta) Amazon.com:
3.8 out of 5 stars (9 customer reviews) 9 of 10 people found the following review helpful:
2.0 out of 5 stars
Didn't like,
By Miran Ali "I don't like anonymous reviewers" - Published on Amazon.com
This review is from: Tales from the Torrid Zone: Travels in the Deep Tropics (Hardcover)
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 and the best I've ever read "The Fatal Impact: The Invasion of the South Pacific, 1767-1840"
6 of 6 people found the following review helpful:
4.0 out of 5 stars
So Many Fascinating Stories ... But When Did They Happen?,
By Umm Lila "Umm Lila" - Published on Amazon.com
This review is from: Tales from the Torrid Zone: Travels in the Deep Tropics (Hardcover)
The structure of Frater's book is built around his birth to a missionary family in the South Pacific, the love of the tropics that never left him despite many years in rainy England, and his purchase of a new bell for the church founded by his grandfather. A long time travel writer for a British newspaper, Frater has many good stories to tell, and they surface in this book in strange ways; a moment in, say, Fiji, wil remind him of a previous moment, in Mozambique for example, which will remind him of yet another story. Although this is certainly a change from itinerary-based travel writing, I would have liked to at least have footnotes saying when exactly a set of events took place. I often had to re-read paragraphs and sections after I realized that he was in Vanuatu, reminiscing about someplace like Burma.
3 of 3 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
Pleased a hard-to-please reader,
By Justin F. Gaynor - Published on Amazon.com
This review is from: Tales from the Torrid Zone: Travels in the Deep Tropics (Vintage Departures) (Paperback)
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 once every couple of years I find myself smiling after a few pages, delighted to find myself in the hands of a masterful narrator. I realized almost immediately that Frater, bouncing from topic to topic but never seeming abrupt, was going to keep me engaged for many happy hours. He's a sharp and skeptical observer of the present, a fiend for historical research, and manages to keep the story flowing, whether talking about the life cycle of a tsetse fly contagion or an audience with the King of Tonga. This is a guy I'd happily have a beer with if I met him on the beach someplace. |
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