Wild Coast by John Gimlette - August 2012

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Wild Coast by John Gimlette - August 2012

Post by Clare Bookclub Mod » Wed Aug 01, 2012 12:47 pm

It is the photos in this book that sell it to me- a giant otter and the conservationist Diane McTurk; a very proud looking African man with a tooth of some wild animal, (a jaguar perhaps?) on a string around his neck. I want to know more about this inaccessible country and more about the descendants of runaway slaves that live there.

The Guianas- literally- the Lands of Many Waters -stand as South America's minnows, small and slightly sodden. The three dwarves squash head-to-toe along a swampy coastline of 900 miles. Inland, towards Brazil in one direction and Venezuela in the other, they boast little but bug-strewn forest and gargantuan rivers. Little wonder, as John Gimlette wryly observes, that these isolated lands have "never been truly possessed".

The reviews only increase this book’s attractiveness

“An engaging odyssey . . . Gimlette shows the region to be endlessly fascinating, if often in a dark way, [and] summarizes sweeps of history with a quinine-dry wit . . . His books manage the neat trick of making the globe feel supremely vast and mysterious once again. He does this in part by writing a narrative that sounds as if it had been penned by an Edwardian explorer—you can almost envision his pith helmet—but also by crafting a superb travelers’ tale in which yesterday has far more ballast and heft than the fleeting happenings of today.”
—Wall Street Journal

Would you like to join me on an adventure into the heart of this intriguing country? Please do and tell me how you fared!

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