Book description
Winner of the Stanford Dolman Lifetime Contribution to Travel Writing Award 2020
The Mosquito Coast - winner of the James Tait Black Memorial Prize - is a breathtaking novel about fanaticism and a futile search for utopia from bestseller Paul Theroux.
Allie Fox is going to re-create the world. Abominating…
Why read it?
1 author picked The Mosquito Coast as one of their favorite books. Why do they recommend it?
I have a weakness for eccentric characters raging at the world while trying to find a place in it. Allie, the protagonist, leaves America for Honduras, where he tries to create an alternate universe, free from what he views as the ills of America. I read this book while living in the Caribbean and Allie’s pronouncements about imperialism and materialism, though clearly paranoid, contained, I felt, a germ of truth. The ebullient characters, the restless energy, and the dark humour, all characteristics of the novelist’s later books, are on full display here.
From Rabindranath's list on The best books for believing you've found a home.
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