From one of the most celebrated travel writers at work today — a vibrantly observant, witty, utterly captivating account of a lifetime's worth of travel between the Tropics of Cancer and Capricorn.

Part memoir, part travelogue, all passionate appreciation, Tales from the Torrid Zone begins in Iririki, Alexander Frater's birthplace. On this tiny island in the South Seas republic of Vanuatu, his grandfather, a Presbyterian missionary from Scotland, converted the inhabitants, his father ran the hospital and his mother built its first schoolhouse in their front garden. And it was on Iririki where, on the eve of his sixth birthday, Frater fell victim to "le coup de bamboo...a mild form of tropical madness for which, luckily, there is no cure," and which has compelled him, again and again, to return to the "seeding, breeding, buzzing, barking, fluttering, squawking, germinating, growing" deep tropics.

His travels take him to nearly all of the eighty-eight countries encompassed by this remarkable, steamy swath of the world. He delves deeply into the history and politics of each nation he visits, and into the lives of the inhabitants, and of the flora and fauna. He is, at once, tourist, explorer and adventurer, as fascinated with — and fascinating about — the quotidian as he is with the extraordinary. But certainly, he does not lack for the extraordinary: dining with the Queen of Tonga in a leper colony; making his way across tropical Africa — and two civil wars — in a forty-four-year-old flying boat; delivering a new church bell to a remote Oceanian island.

From Fiji to Laos, Mexico to Peru, Senegal to Uganda, Taiwan to Indonesia, Frater gives us a richly described, wonderfully anecdotal, endlessly surprising picture of this diverse, feverish, languorously beautiful world — as much a state of mind as it is a geographical phenomenon.

"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." Publishers Weekly (Starred Review) (Copyright Reed Business Information, Inc.)

"[A] pleasing grab bag of a book, a jumble of funny encounters, strange sights, forgotten history and really bad food....[A] diverting tour of the earth's hot zones." William Grimes, The New York Times

“Tales from the Torrid Zone [has a] jagged edge of authenticity . . . Part memoir, part travel yarn, a hymn to the solar lands where people ‘wear their shadows like shoes’ . . . Frater adopts a tropical profusion of language to match his teeming subject, writing with gusto . . . He’s bracingly willing to take verbal as well as physical risks [but] some of the best things in the book are quieter, more lyrical moments . . . Wide-ranging . . . Impressive.”

Christopher Benfey, The New York Times Book Review

“Frater’s thoughts and conversations reveal the torrid zone on a very personal level. The reader can almost feel the stifling wet heat . . . [A] beautifully written book.”

Library Journal

Alexander Frater was chief travel correspondent for the Observer and has written for numerous other publications, including the New Yorker and the New York Times. He lives in London but travels frequently to the tropics.