The Fruit Palace

(Paperback)

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Description

Charles Nicholl is on a quest for 'The Great Cocaine Story'. The time is the early 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.

Reviews

Evokes that vague, sleepy enchantment which comes from dreaming of 'somewhere else'... There are echoes of Chandler, of Burroughs, of Baudelaire and even of Eliot * Sunday Times *
Mr Nicholl proves himself an addictive storyteller-A delicious addition to the library of the Briton out of his depth abroad * Daily Telegraph *
One of the most absorbing travel books I have read... No book I know gives a more perceptive glimpse of the life of the urban poor who are the majority of South Americans. A brilliant book, informative, well-written and fun to read * New York Times Book Review *
A considerable delight - funny, acute and remarkably evocative * Time Out *
Irresistible.. His story is so good that at times it reads like an unusually well-written thriller, then suddenly it turns into lyrical, highly-descriptive travel writing * Irish Times *

Author Bio

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.