The Fruit Hunters
A Story of Nature, Adventure, Commerce, and Obsession
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4.3 • 3 Ratings
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- $13.99
Publisher Description
This vivid and unforgettable expedition through the world of exotic fruit, from an author with “the talents of a food writer, investigative journalist, poet, travel writer, and humorist” (The New York Times Book Review), is being made into a documentary starring Bill Pullman.
The Fruit Hunters is the engrossing story of some of Earth’s most desired foods told by an intrepid journalist and keen observer of nature—both human and botanical.
Delicious, lethal, hallucinogenic, and medicinal, fruits have led nations to war, fueled dictatorships, and lured people into new worlds. Adam Gollner examines the fruits we eat and explains why we eat them (the scientific, economic, and aesthetic reasons); traces the life of mass-produced fruits (how they are created, grown, and marketed) and explores the underworld of fruits that are inaccessible, ignored and even forbidden in the Western world. Peopled with a cast of characters as varied and bizarre as the fruit it discusses—smugglers, inventors, explorers, and epicures—this extraordinary book can “fill a thousand and one summer nights with delightful reading” (The Miami Herald).
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
Journalist Gollner's debut is a rollicking account of the world of fruit and fruit fanatics. He's traveled to many countries in search of exotic fruits, and he describes in sensuous detail some of the hundreds of varieties he's sampled, among them peanut butter fruit, blackberry-jam fruit and coco-de-mer a suggestively shaped coconut known as the "lady fruit" that grows only in the Seychelles. Equally intriguing are some of the characters he has encountered a botanist in Borneo who spends his life studying malodorous durians; fruitarians who believe that a fruit diet promotes transcendental experiences; fruitleggers who bypass import laws; and fruit inventors such as the fabricator of the Grapple which looks like an apple and tastes like a grape. The FDA and the often dubious activities of the international fruit trade, multinational corporations like Chiquita, come in for scrutiny, as does New York City's largest wholesale produce market, in a chapter with more information than one may want on biochemical growth inhibitors, hormone-based retardants, dyes, waxes and corrupt USDA inspectors. Gollner's passion for fruit is infectious, and his fascinating book is a testament to the fact that there is much more to the world of fruit than the bland varieties on our supermarket shelves.
