Fruit Palace – US link
/ UK link
is my favorite ever travel book and was the gestator (along with Snowblind – US link
/ UK link
) of a crazy trip to Venezuela and then cross-country to Cartagena in Colombia in search of a little sumthin’ sumthin’. And any book that can move me that much has to be worth a look. According to the biographical details on Amazon the writer, Charles Nicholl, has written two travel books, The Fruit Palace and Borderlines; a study of Elizabethan alchemy, The Chemical Theatre, and a biography of the pamphleteer Thomas Nashe, A Cup of News. He has also written a reconstruction of Sir Walter Ralegh’s search for El Dorado, The Creature in the Map, and Somebody Else, which won the 1998 Hawthornden Prize. His work has appeared in Granta, Rolling Stone and the Independent. That is the bio of a bookish dusty old fellow it cannot be the same guy that wrote The Fruit Palace as the book is a romp and an education all in one. FYI the fruit palace of the title is a bespoke fruit juice vendor of which there are many in Cartagena. For that alone you should visit the port city as the vendors offer you the sweet juice of the ugliest, oddest looking fruit you’ll ever see.
In the Fruit Palace – US link/ UK link Charles Nicholl is on a quest for ‘The Great Cocaine Story’. The time is the early nineteen eighties and the place – Colombia. The Fruit Palace, a dismal whitewashed cafe that legally dispenses tropical fruit juices, has another purpose as the meeting place for a variety of black market activities and the place where Nicholl unwittingly begins his quest. Nicholl relates his story with madcap energy and vividness as he careens from shantytowns and waterfront barrios to steamy jungle villages and slaughterhouses. He survives fever, earthquake, and discovery by a dealer who threatens to ‘check his oil’ with a knife. And he emerges with a tour de force that is a triumph of intrepid reporting and suspense – this is truly a classic travel book, and an education for anyone attempting the Snowblind express. Some of the reviews on Amazon state that the book seems more fiction than fact and that Colombia has changed greatly in the last 25 years. But I don’t know how they conclude that as In my visits I have found things to still be pretty much as Nicholl describes.
by admin on June 29, 2010
The hot weather has finally broken and I am back on baby-sitting duty as the beautiful Marta Austin is off at work again. So here I sit tapping away at this tosh while young Stanley sleeps upstairs. When I say sleeps I mean snoozes then yells, then snoozes, them yell some more. Though he does seem much happier than when it was so warm over the last few days.
Why am I writing this? Because I have work to do:
- The nude mosaic is not yet finished – I am waiting on a glass delivery
- The money mosaic of Chairman Mao is balefully watching me from across the room. I can’t get motivated to work on it at the moment despite it having a ready market waiting… lazy, lazy, lazy…
by admin on June 29, 2010
by admin on June 29, 2010
The resemblance is uncanny…
by admin on June 28, 2010
I read The Coffee Trader – US link
/ UK link
last year before a trip to Amsterdam with my daughter. I did a search on Amazon to find books to read with an Amsterdam theme. There were surprisingly few. But The Coffee Trader – US link/ UK link seemed to be a cool way to clue myself up on the city’s history.
The Coffee Trader – US link/ UK link is set in the strangely confined world of 17th-century Amsterdam’s immigrant Jewish community and the author, David Liss, builds the suspense quickly. The protagonist, Miguel Lienzo, escaped the Inquisition in Portugal and lives by his wits trading commodities with little success. He honed his skills in deception during years of hiding his Jewish identity in Portugal, so he finds it easy to engage in the evasions and bluffs necessary for a trader on Amsterdam’s stock exchange. While he wants to retain his standing in the Jewish community, he finds it increasingly difficult to abide by the draconian dictates of the Ma’amad, the corrupt ruling council of the Jews. Which is all the more reason not to acknowledge his longing for his brother’s wife, with whom he now lives, having lost all his money in the sugar trade. Miguel is delighted when a sultry Dutch widow enlists him as partner in a secret scheme to make a killing on “coffee fruit,” an exotic bean little known to Europeans in 1659. But she may not be as altruistic as she seems. Soon Miguel is caught in a web of intricate deals, while simultaneously fending off a madman desperate for money, and an enemy who uses the Ma’amad to make Miguel an outcast. Each player in this complex thriller has a hidden agenda, and the twists and turns accelerate as motives gradually become clear. There’s a central question, too: When men manipulate money for a living, are they then inevitably tempted to manipulate truth and morality? The book is also an entertaining way to learn about the history of this fascinating city.
by admin on June 28, 2010
We went out shopping in Windsor today. While my beautiful wife and daughter went looking for shorts I stayed in Café Nero with my lovely son. He repaid my care by pooing on my shirt and shorts.
Lovely!
by admin on June 28, 2010
What an utterly abject England performance, and I am old enough to have seen a few poor performances…
by admin on June 27, 2010
Because it was the hottest day of the year so far we decided to avoid the inevitable football misery by going for a picnic in the country.
As a result we hoofed it through an empty Windsor Great Park to the beautiful copper horse statue.
Stanley is not a huge fan of his dad’s kisses.
So his mum (the beautiful Marta Austin, formerly Wais) ran off over the rocks with him.
by admin on June 27, 2010
