Tales from the Torrid Zone
Travels in the Deep Tropics
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5.0 • 1 Rating
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- £4.99
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- £4.99
Publisher 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 – dines with a tropical queen in a leper colony, makes his way across tropical Africa (and two civil wars) in a forty-four-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’s also a state of mind. The result is a witty, entertaining and immensely readable book from a fine storyteller.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
Frater, author of Chasing the Monsoon, was born in Vanuatu, where his mother had run two schools and his father, a "misinari dokta," had taught and practiced medicine. His grandfather had been a much-revered Presbyterian missionary on nearby Paama Island. Not everyone born and bred in the tropics likes tropical life; many envy the seasons or schools or health services of the temperate world. But just as church bells in the tropics have a unique resonance, so Frater himself has the human version of "tropical resonance." Everything about life in the tropics food, diseases, insects, religion, rivers, language, drink, forestry, human sweat is endlessly fascinating for him, reminding him of a story he heard traveling downstream from Mandalay, or filming in Mozambique, or riding a bus into Rarotonga. He finds the smallest details of tropical life so entertaining, he barely notices the attendant inconveniences. Thus he makes the insects eating his grandfather's book selectively consuming its constituent parts, "the spine's sweet glue and crunchy muslin, biscuity strawboard covers, a confit of gold leaf licked from the titles" sound like regular gourmands. Frater's final tale, of how he brought a grand English bell to his grandfather's church on Paama, forms a fitting grace note to an outstanding memoir.
