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DuMont Reiseabenteuer Wilde Küste: Durch Sumpf und Regenwald zwischen Orinoco und Amazonas (DuMont Reiseabenteuer E-Book)
Ungezähmtes Land
Zwischen Orinoco und Amazonas liegt im Nordosten Südamerikas ein Flecken Erde, der kaum erforscht ist und den kaum jemand kennt. Guyana,Suriname und Französisch-Guiana werden bis heute von Dschungel und Wasser beherrscht. Die frühen Konquistadoren Südamerikas machten einen Bogen um dieses Gebiet, dessen Kolonialgeschichte schließlich Holländer,Briten und Franzosen prägten. John Gimlette begibt sich auf eine Reise entlang der neunhundert Kilometer langen Sumpfküste und durch ihr wildes Hinterland und sammelt dabei verwunderliche Geschichten und Hinweise auf eine erstaunliche Vergangenheit ein. Er stößt in unzugänglichen Regenwald vor, trifft auf die Verstecke entlaufener Sklaven und ehemalige Strafgefangenenlager, seltsame Forts und weltabgeschiedene Eingeborenensiedlungen - aber auch auf einen Weltraumbahnhof. Er begegnet Rebellen,Banditen und Hexenmeistern und sieht sich in Jonestown um, wo 1978 Hunderte Amerikaner dem Anführer ihrer Sekte in den Tod folgten. Wie über so viele andere Ereignisse hat der Dschungel auch darüber längst wieder das Tuch des Schweigens gelegt. Spannend und humorvoll geschrieben, öffnet das Buch die Tür zu einer wunderschönen, bizarren, in mancher Hinsicht auch grausamen Küste, die zu den vergessenen Winkeln dieser Welt gehört.
Dieses E-Book basiert auf folgender Printausgabe: 1. Auflage 2014
Mehr Informationen, Videos und Bilder unter www.dumontreise.de/reiseabenteuer
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Zwischen Orinoco und Amazonas liegt im Nordosten Südamerikas ein Flecken Erde, der kaum erforscht ist und den kaum jemand kennt. Guyana,Suriname und Französisch-Guiana werden bis heute von Dschungel und Wasser beherrscht. Die frühen Konquistadoren Südamerikas machten einen Bogen um dieses Gebiet, dessen Kolonialgeschichte schließlich Holländer,Briten und Franzosen prägten. John Gimlette begibt sich auf eine Reise entlang der neunhundert Kilometer langen Sumpfküste und durch ihr wildes Hinterland und sammelt dabei verwunderliche Geschichten und Hinweise auf eine erstaunliche Vergangenheit ein. Er stößt in unzugänglichen Regenwald vor, trifft auf die Verstecke entlaufener Sklaven und ehemalige Strafgefangenenlager, seltsame Forts und weltabgeschiedene Eingeborenensiedlungen - aber auch auf einen Weltraumbahnhof. Er begegnet Rebellen,Banditen und Hexenmeistern und sieht sich in Jonestown um, wo 1978 Hunderte Amerikaner dem Anführer ihrer Sekte in den Tod folgten. Wie über so viele andere Ereignisse hat der Dschungel auch darüber längst wieder das Tuch des Schweigens gelegt. Spannend und humorvoll geschrieben, öffnet das Buch die Tür zu einer wunderschönen, bizarren, in mancher Hinsicht auch grausamen Küste, die zu den vergessenen Winkeln dieser Welt gehört.
Dieses E-Book basiert auf folgender Printausgabe: 1. Auflage 2014
Mehr Informationen, Videos und Bilder unter www.dumontreise.de/reiseabenteuer
Bitte beachten Sie:
Nicht alle Lesegeräte unterstützen sämtliche der praktischen Zusatzfunktionen gleichermaßen (z.B. Internetlinks, Zoombarkeit von Karten). Auch können je nach Reader Ladezeiten variieren. Wir bitten Sie dies vor dem Kauf zu berücksichtigen!
500 pages, Kindle Edition
First published January 1, 2011
66 people are currently reading
1688 people want to read
About the author
John Gimlette
7 books36 followersJohn Gimlette was born in 1963. At seventeen, he crossed the Soviet Union by train and has since travelled to over 60 countries. In 1982, on the eve of the Falklands War, he was working on an estancia in Argentina. He returned to England via Paraguay and Bolivia to read law at Cambridge.
In 1997, he won the Shiva Naipaul Memorial Prize with ‘Pink Pigs in Paraguay’, which was published in The Spectator in May of that year. The following year he won the Wanderlust Travel Writing competition.
He is a regular contributor to a number of British broadsheets, including The Daily Telegraph, Times and The Guardian travel sections. He also contributes to other travel titles, including the Conde Nast Traveller and Wanderlust. His travel photographs have appeared in the Telegraph, Wanderlust and Geographical.
His first book was At the Tomb of the Inflatable Pig, which is described as a 'vivid, riotous journey into the heart of South America' (see the Reviews page). His second book, Theatre of Fish, set in Newfoundland and Labrador, was published in 2005.
Both books were nominated by The New York Times as being among the ‘100 Notable Books of the Year’.
John Gimlette’s third book was Panther Soup, which followed a wartime journey through France, Germany and Austria, comparing the battlefields of 1944-45 with what can be found there today.
He lives in London where he practices as a barrister. He is married to TV presenter, Jayne Constantinis, and they have one daughter.
In 1997, he won the Shiva Naipaul Memorial Prize with ‘Pink Pigs in Paraguay’, which was published in The Spectator in May of that year. The following year he won the Wanderlust Travel Writing competition.
He is a regular contributor to a number of British broadsheets, including The Daily Telegraph, Times and The Guardian travel sections. He also contributes to other travel titles, including the Conde Nast Traveller and Wanderlust. His travel photographs have appeared in the Telegraph, Wanderlust and Geographical.
His first book was At the Tomb of the Inflatable Pig, which is described as a 'vivid, riotous journey into the heart of South America' (see the Reviews page). His second book, Theatre of Fish, set in Newfoundland and Labrador, was published in 2005.
Both books were nominated by The New York Times as being among the ‘100 Notable Books of the Year’.
John Gimlette’s third book was Panther Soup, which followed a wartime journey through France, Germany and Austria, comparing the battlefields of 1944-45 with what can be found there today.
He lives in London where he practices as a barrister. He is married to TV presenter, Jayne Constantinis, and they have one daughter.
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Displaying 1 - 30 of 108 reviews
February 25, 2019
I was initially excited about this book, which describes a wild, little-known part of the world in vivid detail. However, that excitement soon wore off, as Gimlette seems largely drawn to describing war and atrocities, to emphasizing atmosphere over accuracy in his reportage, and to following the stories of white explorers and colonists while stereotyping and relegating everybody else to the sidelines, even though “everybody else” makes up 99% of the population.
The book is structured around Gimlette’s travels through “the Guianas,” three relatively small countries carved out of the Caribbean coast of South America, but which have remarkably little in common with the rest of the continent. Or rather, two countries – English-speaking Guyana and Dutch-speaking Suriname – plus French Guiana (referred to here as “Guyane”), an overseas department of France. These countries’ populations are mostly descended from the black slaves and Indian indentured servants brought there to work the sugar plantations; there’s also a small native population and, in Suriname, villages of “maroons,” descendants of escaped slaves who, centuries ago, formed their own tribes in the jungle. A little over half the book focuses on Guyana and most of the rest on Suriname, with just one 40-page chapter covering French Guiana.
It’s definitely interesting material, and Gimlette devotes perhaps half or less of the book to his travels, while the rest relates the bloody history of the Guianas. I definitely learned a lot from it: Gimlette clearly did a bunch of research, and he visits many sites of historical import and relates stories revealing the significance of these places to the reader. When covering more recent history, he talks to people who experienced historical events, sometimes including key players as well as everyday folk. He travels widely around the countries, from the coast, where 90% of the population lives, to the jungle and the savannah, and meets people from all walks of life. He has an eye for the bizarre, describes his surroundings in colorful detail, and has a smooth, assured writing style.
That said, the more I read of this book, the more disenchanted I became. Gimlette seems drawn to the horrifying, whether it’s the barbarity of slavery or French Guiana’s penal colony, the horrors of recent civil wars, or the mass suicide/massacre of an American cult at Jonestown; this is not a light or easy read, though its tone is often flippant. Gimlette’s writing is atmospheric, but not well-sourced: despite the fact that the book is largely history, it has no endnotes, only a description of his sources generally. And he seems to play fast and loose with the facts. “Even as I write, there isn’t a single road that leads from the Guianas into the world beyond,” he tells us at the beginning, before taking a bus through French Guiana to the Brazilian border at the end. In writing about the Jonestown cult, he asserts that “Jonestown carried on killing for years after the massacre. . . . Even years after the cult’s demise, defectors were still being hunted down and killed” – a claim the internet does not seem to support.
But it’s not uncommon for him to leave his facts vague (who is supposed to have killed the defectors, given that Jones’s loyal followers had already killed themselves?). When discussing Sir Walter Raleigh’s final, ill-fated expedition into the rainforest, he describes in detail the suicide of Raleigh’s friend Captain Keymis and Raleigh’s own execution back home in England, but fails to note why Keymis killed himself or why Raleigh (who comes up time and again in this book) was executed, beyond the vague statement that “the expedition disintegrated into a bloody brawl.” I had to turn to the internet to learn that, in fact, Keymis lead an expedition against the Spanish without Raleigh’s permission, in which Raleigh’s son was killed; Keymis killed himself because Raleigh refused to forgive him, and Raleigh was executed because the skirmish violated the terms of his own parole on a questionable prior conviction for plotting against the king. It’s as if Gimlette wanted to include their deaths for the extra color and weight they lent the story, but couldn’t be bothered to share the facts from which a reader could make sense of them.
And then there’s the fact that so much of the book is focused on white European men like Gimlette himself, even if they did nothing more than wander into the jungle and die (see Raymond Maufrais). It winds up giving the impression that only these people’s stories are worth telling, particularly alongside Gimlette’s ready stereotypes of everyone else. The Amerindians, apparently, are cannibals, as are the Africans. Escaped slaves who set up fiefdoms full of brutality and debauchery are “reverting back to old Africa,” despite the fact that this is how the colonists operated toward them.
So ultimately, I can give this book a cautious recommendation at best. It’s a colorful introduction to a world about which little has been written, but it’s also a heavy read, imbued with the author’s biases and questionable, unsourced assertions. Too bad, for a book that began with such promise.
The book is structured around Gimlette’s travels through “the Guianas,” three relatively small countries carved out of the Caribbean coast of South America, but which have remarkably little in common with the rest of the continent. Or rather, two countries – English-speaking Guyana and Dutch-speaking Suriname – plus French Guiana (referred to here as “Guyane”), an overseas department of France. These countries’ populations are mostly descended from the black slaves and Indian indentured servants brought there to work the sugar plantations; there’s also a small native population and, in Suriname, villages of “maroons,” descendants of escaped slaves who, centuries ago, formed their own tribes in the jungle. A little over half the book focuses on Guyana and most of the rest on Suriname, with just one 40-page chapter covering French Guiana.
It’s definitely interesting material, and Gimlette devotes perhaps half or less of the book to his travels, while the rest relates the bloody history of the Guianas. I definitely learned a lot from it: Gimlette clearly did a bunch of research, and he visits many sites of historical import and relates stories revealing the significance of these places to the reader. When covering more recent history, he talks to people who experienced historical events, sometimes including key players as well as everyday folk. He travels widely around the countries, from the coast, where 90% of the population lives, to the jungle and the savannah, and meets people from all walks of life. He has an eye for the bizarre, describes his surroundings in colorful detail, and has a smooth, assured writing style.
That said, the more I read of this book, the more disenchanted I became. Gimlette seems drawn to the horrifying, whether it’s the barbarity of slavery or French Guiana’s penal colony, the horrors of recent civil wars, or the mass suicide/massacre of an American cult at Jonestown; this is not a light or easy read, though its tone is often flippant. Gimlette’s writing is atmospheric, but not well-sourced: despite the fact that the book is largely history, it has no endnotes, only a description of his sources generally. And he seems to play fast and loose with the facts. “Even as I write, there isn’t a single road that leads from the Guianas into the world beyond,” he tells us at the beginning, before taking a bus through French Guiana to the Brazilian border at the end. In writing about the Jonestown cult, he asserts that “Jonestown carried on killing for years after the massacre. . . . Even years after the cult’s demise, defectors were still being hunted down and killed” – a claim the internet does not seem to support.
But it’s not uncommon for him to leave his facts vague (who is supposed to have killed the defectors, given that Jones’s loyal followers had already killed themselves?). When discussing Sir Walter Raleigh’s final, ill-fated expedition into the rainforest, he describes in detail the suicide of Raleigh’s friend Captain Keymis and Raleigh’s own execution back home in England, but fails to note why Keymis killed himself or why Raleigh (who comes up time and again in this book) was executed, beyond the vague statement that “the expedition disintegrated into a bloody brawl.” I had to turn to the internet to learn that, in fact, Keymis lead an expedition against the Spanish without Raleigh’s permission, in which Raleigh’s son was killed; Keymis killed himself because Raleigh refused to forgive him, and Raleigh was executed because the skirmish violated the terms of his own parole on a questionable prior conviction for plotting against the king. It’s as if Gimlette wanted to include their deaths for the extra color and weight they lent the story, but couldn’t be bothered to share the facts from which a reader could make sense of them.
And then there’s the fact that so much of the book is focused on white European men like Gimlette himself, even if they did nothing more than wander into the jungle and die (see Raymond Maufrais). It winds up giving the impression that only these people’s stories are worth telling, particularly alongside Gimlette’s ready stereotypes of everyone else. The Amerindians, apparently, are cannibals, as are the Africans. Escaped slaves who set up fiefdoms full of brutality and debauchery are “reverting back to old Africa,” despite the fact that this is how the colonists operated toward them.
So ultimately, I can give this book a cautious recommendation at best. It’s a colorful introduction to a world about which little has been written, but it’s also a heavy read, imbued with the author’s biases and questionable, unsourced assertions. Too bad, for a book that began with such promise.
July 7, 2012
I had read the author's At the Tomb of the Inflatable Pig a couple of years ago, and so I knew I was in for another wildly entertaining travel book by the Gimlette-eyed author. In Wild Coast: Travels on South America's Untamed Edge, he visits the three least-known countries in the New World: Guyana, Surinam, and French Guiane.
Rich in incident and lavish in descriptions of one of the most untamed places on earth, this book is a pleasure to read. In fact, three times over. What I mean is that each of the three Guyanas, while sparsely populated, has a vast and difficult to traverse hinterland. For each of the three countries, we begin with a color chapter regarding the coast and then delve into the rainforests and tropical savannas. In the process, we meet some fascinating characters, ranging from 17th century settlers to some of the strangest aborigines (whom Gimlette always refers to as Amerindians).
Except for my known aversion to mosquitoes and other natural enemies of man, I would love to visit at least one of the Guyanas, but I fear coming down with malaria, dengue, yellowjack, or some such tropical disease. What saves the rich jungle of those countries from mass exploitation is this very hostility to man's comfort. Still, if I had enough repellent....
Rich in incident and lavish in descriptions of one of the most untamed places on earth, this book is a pleasure to read. In fact, three times over. What I mean is that each of the three Guyanas, while sparsely populated, has a vast and difficult to traverse hinterland. For each of the three countries, we begin with a color chapter regarding the coast and then delve into the rainforests and tropical savannas. In the process, we meet some fascinating characters, ranging from 17th century settlers to some of the strangest aborigines (whom Gimlette always refers to as Amerindians).
Except for my known aversion to mosquitoes and other natural enemies of man, I would love to visit at least one of the Guyanas, but I fear coming down with malaria, dengue, yellowjack, or some such tropical disease. What saves the rich jungle of those countries from mass exploitation is this very hostility to man's comfort. Still, if I had enough repellent....
June 10, 2021
After laughing myself silly on Gimlette's earlier books about Paraguay and maritime Canada, I found this one...I don't know, quite interesting but not nearly as rollicking. After rereading it, though, I discovered that it's every bit as funny as the earlier books, but Gimlette cannot bring himself to dismiss the pall of slavery with cheap jokes. Instead, he brings a sort of iron control to his writing, making vicious fun of slavers in an admirably understated style.
An example: Displaying his impressive grasp of history, he mentions a notorious sugar plantation from the days of Dutch rule. He finds it on an obscure map:
"No longer conspicuous," indeed. Nobody else writes like this; I don't think anybody else can. I treasure this book.
An example: Displaying his impressive grasp of history, he mentions a notorious sugar plantation from the days of Dutch rule. He finds it on an obscure map:
Next, there was the problem of getting there. Back in 1799, Bolingbroke had taken a tent-boat from Georgetown, rowed by some slaves. The journey had lasted two and a half hours, and throughout it the oarsmen had sung a song called 'Good Neger make good Massa'. With this option no longer conspicuous, I decided to call my old friend the driver Ramdat...
"No longer conspicuous," indeed. Nobody else writes like this; I don't think anybody else can. I treasure this book.
August 3, 2017
Describes the author's systematic travels through Guyana, Suriname and French Guiana. The author is a first-rate researcher, and to me the most interesting part was the history of these places - he visits even places obscure today so he can relate this history, which is generally horrifying and depressing. His account of slavery there viscerally brings home the evil and brutality of the institution and how it adversely affected not only the slaves but also the owners. Seeing this institution in another setting deepened my understanding of the continuing pernicious effects of slavery on the white as well as the black US population. The history of French Guiana, a penal colony best known for Devil's Island but which continued until the 1960s, is depressing and gives an unflattering impression of French sensibilities into modern times. Jonestown is also covered as well as travels to the sparsely inhabited interior of the Guianas.
Why, then, 3 stars? I found his account of the modern countries superficial, as was his understanding of human nature and the people he meets. For example, he cannot understand why the Dutch wives of the plantation owners treated their slaves cruelly, this after he has spent several pages describing the owner's dissipated life complete with slave harems, male dinner parties served by naked slave women that ended in orgies, alcohol and drug abuse, absolute power of life, death and torture over all their slaves, etc. These women had no power over their husbands at all, and in fact if a white women was discovered to have a slave lover, the lover was executed and the woman banished. It seems perfectly natural to me that a person in such a powerless and disrespected position would displace her frustration and anger onto those who were in her power. Later, an African-Surinamese woman raised in Holland expresses her alienation from Suriname, which she had come to hoping she would feel at home for the first time in her life. The experience brings the bitter realization, however, that she is in fact Dutch, not African or Surinamese, hates her ancestral homeland and will return to Holland. He can't understand why she's upset, and says in part, "Perhaps it was a mark of the superficiality of my travels, but I was sorry to be leaving ... Did Felisie really mean what she'd said, or believe it with such vehemence?" The author wasn't someone who appealed to me as a person and seemed pretty clueless about people. Nonetheless, I would recommend this book for people wanting to learn about this region of the world.
Why, then, 3 stars? I found his account of the modern countries superficial, as was his understanding of human nature and the people he meets. For example, he cannot understand why the Dutch wives of the plantation owners treated their slaves cruelly, this after he has spent several pages describing the owner's dissipated life complete with slave harems, male dinner parties served by naked slave women that ended in orgies, alcohol and drug abuse, absolute power of life, death and torture over all their slaves, etc. These women had no power over their husbands at all, and in fact if a white women was discovered to have a slave lover, the lover was executed and the woman banished. It seems perfectly natural to me that a person in such a powerless and disrespected position would displace her frustration and anger onto those who were in her power. Later, an African-Surinamese woman raised in Holland expresses her alienation from Suriname, which she had come to hoping she would feel at home for the first time in her life. The experience brings the bitter realization, however, that she is in fact Dutch, not African or Surinamese, hates her ancestral homeland and will return to Holland. He can't understand why she's upset, and says in part, "Perhaps it was a mark of the superficiality of my travels, but I was sorry to be leaving ... Did Felisie really mean what she'd said, or believe it with such vehemence?" The author wasn't someone who appealed to me as a person and seemed pretty clueless about people. Nonetheless, I would recommend this book for people wanting to learn about this region of the world.
July 29, 2012
I love travel books and have read a lot of them. This is the third travel book by John Gimlette that I have read and I have to say that, although the geographical location is different, this book is the same as the others in that the author takes what SHOULD be an interesting trip to the untamed and largely uncharted countries of Guyana, Suriname, and French Guiana and makes it rather boring. One blurb I saw about this book favorably compared John Gimlette's travel writing to that of Redmond O'Hanlon which I can unequivocally state is not true. And if there are any favorable comparisons out there of Gimlette's writing to that of Paul Theroux, those would also not be true. Perhaps it is the total lack of humor in Gimlette's books that leaves me cold because, as with any trip to off-the-beaten-path places, some of the weird stuff and people encountered are damn funny. Nothing humorous in this book though. But there is a lot of history of each place, too much really.
The most interesting part of this book for me was the author's trip to Jonestown, Guyana, the famous site of the 1978 mass suicide of the Rev. Jim Jones and his People's Temple followers. It was interesting to read about what Jonestown is like today (an overgrown back-to-the-jungle nothingness) and to get the perspective of some of the people who still live in that area who were also there in 1978.
Having said all that, I did finish the book as I do enjoy learning about these off-the-beaten-path places, but I couldn't wait to finish it and get on to my next book.
The most interesting part of this book for me was the author's trip to Jonestown, Guyana, the famous site of the 1978 mass suicide of the Rev. Jim Jones and his People's Temple followers. It was interesting to read about what Jonestown is like today (an overgrown back-to-the-jungle nothingness) and to get the perspective of some of the people who still live in that area who were also there in 1978.
Having said all that, I did finish the book as I do enjoy learning about these off-the-beaten-path places, but I couldn't wait to finish it and get on to my next book.
October 7, 2014
gimlette always does a good job of trying to go to places 'off the beaten path' and talk to all sorts of folks to get an idea of attitudes and cultures, from ex-dictators to peasant farmers, and even drunk dudes down on the waterfront . his writing about paraguay i found fun and informative At the Tomb of the Inflatable Pig: Travels Through Paraguay
the wild coast of south america is a long tragedy for the indians, then the slaves, of european colonists and companies. sugar made the dutch, french and english wildly rich, then revolts started about 1760 and uniquely, the slaves 'won', escaping and living in the interior away from all whites, creating a south american rain forest 'african' culture and economies. the euros then started importing east indians and Indonesians to take the place of african slaves, and made those more eastern people virtual slaves.
today? guayana, suriname, and french guiana are failing societies with more folks living in other countries than their homelands, where infrastructure is about kaput, government is ineffectual and corrupt, drugs mafia is rampant, gold and bauxite extraction is in high gear, indians dying out and losing ground, but
90% or more of the landmass is empty of humans, where untold numbers of species are unknown to humans, out in the rainforests and savannahs, where no roads or navigable rivers go.
check out a google images of the wild coast, it is so dark at night, it disappears.
book has lots of pics, annotated bibliography, index. 4 great maps.
the wild coast of south america is a long tragedy for the indians, then the slaves, of european colonists and companies. sugar made the dutch, french and english wildly rich, then revolts started about 1760 and uniquely, the slaves 'won', escaping and living in the interior away from all whites, creating a south american rain forest 'african' culture and economies. the euros then started importing east indians and Indonesians to take the place of african slaves, and made those more eastern people virtual slaves.
today? guayana, suriname, and french guiana are failing societies with more folks living in other countries than their homelands, where infrastructure is about kaput, government is ineffectual and corrupt, drugs mafia is rampant, gold and bauxite extraction is in high gear, indians dying out and losing ground, but
90% or more of the landmass is empty of humans, where untold numbers of species are unknown to humans, out in the rainforests and savannahs, where no roads or navigable rivers go.
check out a google images of the wild coast, it is so dark at night, it disappears.
book has lots of pics, annotated bibliography, index. 4 great maps.
September 20, 2013
This is one of the strangest books I've read in a long time. On one hand, it's about a part of the world that I--and most of the rest of the world--know next to nothing about, and after reading it, I have at last started to fill in some of the blanks in that part of my mental map. Yet there were some chapters (especially "The Golden Rupununi") in which Gimlette's descriptions of his travels were nonsensical, and even after rereading passages, I couldn't tell if it was the writing or the sheer strangeness of the world he was describing that threw me. He also seems a bit uncritical in using earlier travelogues as reliable sources, particularly in repeating the idea that the Carib people were cannibals, which I know from a scholarly book I edited is hotly contested and probably untrue. But at least I now have a sense of what happened in Jonestown (Guyana), why Suriname doesn't show up on nighttime satellite maps, and where France once shipped its prisoners and now launches its satellites and spacecraft from (that would be Guyane).
March 21, 2017
To jeden z najlepszych reportaży podróżniczych, jakie czytałam. Niestety nie udało mi się napisać o nim notki bezpośrednio po lekturze czyli w kwietniu ubiegłego roku, więc wrażenia już się zatarły, co więcej czuję, że jestem gotowa na ponowną lekturę.
Bardzo długo szukałam, w ramach projektu południowoamerykańskiego, książek z Dzikiego wybrzeża, czyli Surinamu, Gujany oraz Gujany Francuskiej. Poległam tylko na tej ostatniej, ponieważ niestety nie czytam po francusku. Dzięki książce Gimlette mogłam poznać ten rejon bliżej.
Ten kawałek Ameryki Południowej fascynuje mnie od dawna - gęsto zabudowane wybrzeże, a za nim nieprzebyta dżungla. Gdy spoglądam na mapę widzę tylko zieleń. Jak musi wyglądać życie w kraju, gdzie przeważająca większość jest trudna do przebycia? Autor książki daje odpowiedź na to pytanie.
Ciąg dalszy: http://przeczytalamksiazke.blogspot.p...
Bardzo długo szukałam, w ramach projektu południowoamerykańskiego, książek z Dzikiego wybrzeża, czyli Surinamu, Gujany oraz Gujany Francuskiej. Poległam tylko na tej ostatniej, ponieważ niestety nie czytam po francusku. Dzięki książce Gimlette mogłam poznać ten rejon bliżej.
Ten kawałek Ameryki Południowej fascynuje mnie od dawna - gęsto zabudowane wybrzeże, a za nim nieprzebyta dżungla. Gdy spoglądam na mapę widzę tylko zieleń. Jak musi wyglądać życie w kraju, gdzie przeważająca większość jest trudna do przebycia? Autor książki daje odpowiedź na to pytanie.
Ciąg dalszy: http://przeczytalamksiazke.blogspot.p...
January 24, 2022
Excellent. When a genuinely curious traveller meets an absolutely great subject, a certain kind of magic happens. The Guyanas seemed to want a writer like Gimlette to come along and attempt to explain the unexplainable. He does so valiantly, and has produced travel writing that reads like a great novel. The characters, the atmosphere, the strangeness of these lost lands, Gimlette weaves beautifully around it all, telling stories that will stay with you for a while. I have always been interested in Guyana and the lands around the Carribean, and this book was exactly what I had been looking for to understand them. Enjoyed it a lot, and will reach for his other books soon. Highly recommended.
January 10, 2016
The chapter on Surinam was fascinating. It showed how centuries of intermarriage across vastly different cultures had played out economically and politically in this former Dutch colony.
July 15, 2011
Wow! What a wonderful book.
Wild Coast: Travels on South America's Untamed Edge is a contemporary travel account mixed with history. Don't write it off based on that statement -- it is a phenomenal book, some of which reads like good, old-fashioned travel narratives of earlier eras. Told over the space of nine chapters, the story alternates with the author's travels through Guyana, Surinam (or Suriname), and French Guiana. He's in good company: these regions were visited separately at one time by literary greats V.S. Naipaul (along with his brother Shiva) and Evelyn Waugh, whose sojourn through Guyana played a part in the creation of his most excellent novel Handful of Dust, as well as his own narrative of travel in Guyana and Brazil called 92 Days.
The author's first stop is in Georgetown, Guyana (once known as British Guiana) but his first side trip is to Jonestown, the site of the famous (or infamous) People's Temple led by Jim Jones. In the town of Port Kaituma he talks to some of the locals about the events of 1978, especially the shooting of Congressman Leo Ryan, three newsmen and a People's Temple defector. Driven to the airstrip where all of that went down, he finds that people are still somewhat reluctant to discuss what happened because, as his guide at the time told him
"People here are still frightened...They don't know what happened, or who anyone is. They hardly ever seen any white men before. The only ones they saw were people from the Temple, who then starts killing them. Are you surprised they're still afraid?"
Leaving Jonestown, Gimlette makes his way to the Savannah of Rupununi, which he calls one of the "most magnificent, untrampled corners of our planet." After observing and discussing the landscape, he explains that the area once was thought to be the site of the mythical El Dorado, the city of the Gilded Man, also known as Manoa. The legend was started after an expedition down the Orinoco by Martinez, a Spanish Captain and munitions master whose cargo ignited. As a punishment, he was bound and set adrift in a canoe, where supposedly he was rescued by Indians and taken to this city, where all he did for seven months was to collect gold pebbles. The story was picked up again in the 1580s by another Spaniard who hears of a city of gold -- confirming the tale told by Martinez. As he's planning to make his own expedition to the area, he's captured off of Trinidad by Sir Walter Raleigh, who is also planning to undertake the same search. It is, of course, fruitless, but undeterred by his lack of discovery, Raleigh sees that there's money to be made here and publishes a book that he hopes will catch the fancy of investors back home. Laughed at, ridiculed, he sends one more explorer to find the city, and this time, taking a new route, Manoa is found. It's not the city of the Gilded Man, but it does exist. Voltaire will later capture the search for El Dorado and the "general foolishness of mankind" in his work Candide. Gimlette explores the forests of the Essequibo river, as well as the ruins of the old Dutch plantations that existed there. In an area known as the Berbice, where one man told the author to "expect giant frogs, marijuana plantations and strange, old people jabbering in Dutch," the author takes a "journey through 1763," the year of a particularly bloody slave revolt -- and tries to imagine the lives of the Dutch plantation owners and families along the way.
Then he's off to Surinam (or Suriname), where he finds in Paramaribo a city that he loves and people who speak a rather odd form of pigeon English called Talkie-talkie -- in which, for example, Olie Bollen, Pom, Bami Kip and Pinda Soep with Tom Tom become oily bread, yam, chicken noodles and peanut soup with plantain. He follows a trail made by two soldiers sent there by the government to help quell the slave revolts of the 1700s. The first is Colonel Fourgeoud, who at sixty was already a veteran of the earlier Berbice revolts, and who the author describes as being a psychopath, "like Robert Duvall's Colonel Kilgore: a thundering, bare-chested killer who will eat nothing, feel nothing and fear nothing." Second is Scotsman John Gabriel Stedman, wrote and published an account of his adventures in jungle warfare, which the author notes, "reads like a Georgian rendering of Apocalypse Now." But war isn't only a thing of the 18th century, as the author reveals -- Surinam's hinterlands became the site of some of the most bloodiest and ruthless wars not so long ago.
Leaving Surinam, it's on to French Guiana, the old penal colony captured in readers minds forever with Henri Charrière's book Papillon, which was made into a film in 1973. Gimlette notes that "as an autobiography, Papillon is highly improbable," but that he describes things that happened to several people -- it seems that he was never in trouble, and spent his time taking care of the latrines. But the brutality of the penal colony and the various institutions throughout the country is all too real, as are the dangers of French Guiana's interior, as evidenced in an account published in 1953 by the father of Raymond Maufrais, who at 23 decided to make the trip down the Maroni river, into 35,000 square miles of jungle. Maufrais never made it out; only his diaries were found. After spending a few days on the Salut Islands, site of Devil's Island, the author took a tour of the Centre Spatial Guyanais, a space station whose proximity to the equator makes for shorter orbit of the satellites launched by various European countries. And finally, the last journey is to the lake area of Oyapok, where in 1629, one of the author's forebears had set foot and "finished up." Gimlette knew very little about that expedition, only having very brief clues left behind in bits of documentation.
The author's travels are interesting on their own, but his extensive knowledge of the history of the three countries adds another dimension to this novel. One of his working ideas throughout the novel is that although "slavery seemed to have disappeared completely," it is "everywhere, even in the food and the way people lived". He notes that "every strand of Guianese life somehow led back to this point". To understand this concept, he takes his readers back in time, place to place, discussing not only slavery, but events leading up to the revolts of 1763 in the Barbice and again in Surinam of 1769, and what happened with the slaves who managed to escape afterwards. Truly fascinating stuff, but the book also incorporates the effects of colonization, racism, and immigration, as well as the geography, all of which have had a hand in making these areas what they are today. The history is quite necessary to the book, and there is the added bonus of all of the quirky people he happens to meet along his many journeys.
I very highly recommend this book -- one of the joys of reading it is that there is no sense that the author is trying to show us how interconnected our cultures are -- quite the opposite. Those types of travel narratives I can live without. In Wild Coast he shows that there are, inevitably, places in which the modern world has encroached, whether for good or for bad, but for the most part, there are still some mysteries left in these countries, vast areas of which are still dark and inaccessible. A truly fascinating read.
Wild Coast: Travels on South America's Untamed Edge is a contemporary travel account mixed with history. Don't write it off based on that statement -- it is a phenomenal book, some of which reads like good, old-fashioned travel narratives of earlier eras. Told over the space of nine chapters, the story alternates with the author's travels through Guyana, Surinam (or Suriname), and French Guiana. He's in good company: these regions were visited separately at one time by literary greats V.S. Naipaul (along with his brother Shiva) and Evelyn Waugh, whose sojourn through Guyana played a part in the creation of his most excellent novel Handful of Dust, as well as his own narrative of travel in Guyana and Brazil called 92 Days.
The author's first stop is in Georgetown, Guyana (once known as British Guiana) but his first side trip is to Jonestown, the site of the famous (or infamous) People's Temple led by Jim Jones. In the town of Port Kaituma he talks to some of the locals about the events of 1978, especially the shooting of Congressman Leo Ryan, three newsmen and a People's Temple defector. Driven to the airstrip where all of that went down, he finds that people are still somewhat reluctant to discuss what happened because, as his guide at the time told him
"People here are still frightened...They don't know what happened, or who anyone is. They hardly ever seen any white men before. The only ones they saw were people from the Temple, who then starts killing them. Are you surprised they're still afraid?"
Leaving Jonestown, Gimlette makes his way to the Savannah of Rupununi, which he calls one of the "most magnificent, untrampled corners of our planet." After observing and discussing the landscape, he explains that the area once was thought to be the site of the mythical El Dorado, the city of the Gilded Man, also known as Manoa. The legend was started after an expedition down the Orinoco by Martinez, a Spanish Captain and munitions master whose cargo ignited. As a punishment, he was bound and set adrift in a canoe, where supposedly he was rescued by Indians and taken to this city, where all he did for seven months was to collect gold pebbles. The story was picked up again in the 1580s by another Spaniard who hears of a city of gold -- confirming the tale told by Martinez. As he's planning to make his own expedition to the area, he's captured off of Trinidad by Sir Walter Raleigh, who is also planning to undertake the same search. It is, of course, fruitless, but undeterred by his lack of discovery, Raleigh sees that there's money to be made here and publishes a book that he hopes will catch the fancy of investors back home. Laughed at, ridiculed, he sends one more explorer to find the city, and this time, taking a new route, Manoa is found. It's not the city of the Gilded Man, but it does exist. Voltaire will later capture the search for El Dorado and the "general foolishness of mankind" in his work Candide. Gimlette explores the forests of the Essequibo river, as well as the ruins of the old Dutch plantations that existed there. In an area known as the Berbice, where one man told the author to "expect giant frogs, marijuana plantations and strange, old people jabbering in Dutch," the author takes a "journey through 1763," the year of a particularly bloody slave revolt -- and tries to imagine the lives of the Dutch plantation owners and families along the way.
Then he's off to Surinam (or Suriname), where he finds in Paramaribo a city that he loves and people who speak a rather odd form of pigeon English called Talkie-talkie -- in which, for example, Olie Bollen, Pom, Bami Kip and Pinda Soep with Tom Tom become oily bread, yam, chicken noodles and peanut soup with plantain. He follows a trail made by two soldiers sent there by the government to help quell the slave revolts of the 1700s. The first is Colonel Fourgeoud, who at sixty was already a veteran of the earlier Berbice revolts, and who the author describes as being a psychopath, "like Robert Duvall's Colonel Kilgore: a thundering, bare-chested killer who will eat nothing, feel nothing and fear nothing." Second is Scotsman John Gabriel Stedman, wrote and published an account of his adventures in jungle warfare, which the author notes, "reads like a Georgian rendering of Apocalypse Now." But war isn't only a thing of the 18th century, as the author reveals -- Surinam's hinterlands became the site of some of the most bloodiest and ruthless wars not so long ago.
Leaving Surinam, it's on to French Guiana, the old penal colony captured in readers minds forever with Henri Charrière's book Papillon, which was made into a film in 1973. Gimlette notes that "as an autobiography, Papillon is highly improbable," but that he describes things that happened to several people -- it seems that he was never in trouble, and spent his time taking care of the latrines. But the brutality of the penal colony and the various institutions throughout the country is all too real, as are the dangers of French Guiana's interior, as evidenced in an account published in 1953 by the father of Raymond Maufrais, who at 23 decided to make the trip down the Maroni river, into 35,000 square miles of jungle. Maufrais never made it out; only his diaries were found. After spending a few days on the Salut Islands, site of Devil's Island, the author took a tour of the Centre Spatial Guyanais, a space station whose proximity to the equator makes for shorter orbit of the satellites launched by various European countries. And finally, the last journey is to the lake area of Oyapok, where in 1629, one of the author's forebears had set foot and "finished up." Gimlette knew very little about that expedition, only having very brief clues left behind in bits of documentation.
The author's travels are interesting on their own, but his extensive knowledge of the history of the three countries adds another dimension to this novel. One of his working ideas throughout the novel is that although "slavery seemed to have disappeared completely," it is "everywhere, even in the food and the way people lived". He notes that "every strand of Guianese life somehow led back to this point". To understand this concept, he takes his readers back in time, place to place, discussing not only slavery, but events leading up to the revolts of 1763 in the Barbice and again in Surinam of 1769, and what happened with the slaves who managed to escape afterwards. Truly fascinating stuff, but the book also incorporates the effects of colonization, racism, and immigration, as well as the geography, all of which have had a hand in making these areas what they are today. The history is quite necessary to the book, and there is the added bonus of all of the quirky people he happens to meet along his many journeys.
I very highly recommend this book -- one of the joys of reading it is that there is no sense that the author is trying to show us how interconnected our cultures are -- quite the opposite. Those types of travel narratives I can live without. In Wild Coast he shows that there are, inevitably, places in which the modern world has encroached, whether for good or for bad, but for the most part, there are still some mysteries left in these countries, vast areas of which are still dark and inaccessible. A truly fascinating read.
November 20, 2017
To bardzo ciekawa książka, ale tak o 150-200 stron za długa.
May 16, 2013
I am a traveler, and was thrilled to find a book about a part of the world that is rarely written about. My expectation with this book was to really get a sense of the three countries - the culture, a little history, the people...and some reasons to follow the author's lead in visiting them. So I guess I was using Gimlette as an advance team. To his credit he did a very nicely detailed job, it's clear that he spent the time and did his homework. That said, there's something about his style that doesn't compel me. With Theroux it's a love/ hate relationship...I'm always intrigued, am often irritated with his perspectives, am surprised by my agreement, and almost always want to take the same journey to see how I feel about it. With Bryson I laugh, I am satisfied that he has done his homework, and I want to go and meet the people he has met. With Gimlette, though, I found myself not wanting to do any of those things. What comes across as detailed, yeoman-like reporting really turns into a long slog through some apparently god-forsaken places. There is little to no humor. Anecdotes and compelling storylines are absent, and what we're left with is reporting and cold travelogue. Perhaps this is not much more than "Joe Friday's" trip report. I am sorry for being so critical, yet the more I think about it the less compelling the book is to me. Perhaps, though, as Gimlette illustrates, these three countries really are god-forsaken messes. I suppose I will have to go and see for myself, and for that I thank Gimlette.
December 12, 2016
I couldn't get through this book. It reads like he edited his travel journal and just published that. The history and stories are interresting, but the choppy construction made this impossible for me to enjoy.
February 7, 2018
I must admit that while I am no stranger to odd travel writings, I am not a particularly wild traveler in the vein of this particular author [1]. One will not likely find me trying to harass a former head of state for an interview, but all the same I did find much of this book to be deeply interesting, not least because the author managed to split the difference between the unrealistic praise of a Sir Walter Raleigh and the unmitigated spleen of a much more cynical traveler like Evelyn Waugh, whose experiences in that part of the world were inspiration for his deeply entertaining novel A Handful Of Dust [2]. A writer who can combine a high degree of cynicism about things that we should be cynical about as well as a genuine interest in the people he is around is a writer whose work I can personally appreciate, and this author certainly provides plenty of interesting material that makes it worth reading other books by the author that I may come in contact with in the future. If you want a gritty and somewhat unpleasant look at life in Guyana, Suriname and French Guiana, this book definitely provides that.
In terms of its contents, this book lives up to its name. The author decided that it would be adventuresome to travel in the Guianas and explore his family history at the same time, and managed to find a publisher willing to pay him to write a book about the experience, and so that is exactly what he did. He spends time writing about the three Guianas in rough proportion to their size and population, with more time on Guyana than Suriname and more time on Suriname than French Guiana. Throughout his travels he meets cattle herders, hunters, politicians, actors, and a people with a wide variety of political beliefs and ethnic origins. He shows a great deal of criticism of European explorers and slaveowners and traders and also shows the aftermath of empire where these struggling nations come apart at the seams and fight against the threat of oblivion where the presence of civilization may end up being swallowed up by the invincible forests and jungles of the area. Mostly the author is intensely cynical about politics and its malign effect on the lives of ordinary people in the area, with endemic violence and corruption, wildcat Brazilian gold miners and prostitutes, and lots of drugs and sex galore.
It is hard to determine if the author is lamenting the corruption of the Guianas or celebrating it. The author certainly seems like the kind of person who can comfortably reflect on slavery and imprisonment and seems to take an interest in the drug trade, traveling in dangerous places, and schmoozing with politicians. One might wonder if he is able to get along with others because he disguises what he thinks and feels from the people that he talks to, to the point where it is unclear where his loyalties lie. Even so, much of this book is worthwhile to read for the sheer enjoyment of seeing the author in peril or having to deal with countries where political violence and poverty are endemic. One feels a slightly less triumphant feeling when one realizes that one is planning to visit these precise areas, in which case one then begins to wonder what separates someone who is an adventuresome or even recklessly bold traveler from the ordinary person who merely reads about other people's experiences without feeling any sort of desire to travel to obscure and imperiled lands that the world has largely forgot.
[1] See, for example:
https://edgeinducedcohesion.blog/2017...
https://edgeinducedcohesion.blog/2010...
https://edgeinducedcohesion.blog/2017...
https://edgeinducedcohesion.blog/2017...
https://edgeinducedcohesion.blog/2017...
[2] https://edgeinducedcohesion.blog/2017...
In terms of its contents, this book lives up to its name. The author decided that it would be adventuresome to travel in the Guianas and explore his family history at the same time, and managed to find a publisher willing to pay him to write a book about the experience, and so that is exactly what he did. He spends time writing about the three Guianas in rough proportion to their size and population, with more time on Guyana than Suriname and more time on Suriname than French Guiana. Throughout his travels he meets cattle herders, hunters, politicians, actors, and a people with a wide variety of political beliefs and ethnic origins. He shows a great deal of criticism of European explorers and slaveowners and traders and also shows the aftermath of empire where these struggling nations come apart at the seams and fight against the threat of oblivion where the presence of civilization may end up being swallowed up by the invincible forests and jungles of the area. Mostly the author is intensely cynical about politics and its malign effect on the lives of ordinary people in the area, with endemic violence and corruption, wildcat Brazilian gold miners and prostitutes, and lots of drugs and sex galore.
It is hard to determine if the author is lamenting the corruption of the Guianas or celebrating it. The author certainly seems like the kind of person who can comfortably reflect on slavery and imprisonment and seems to take an interest in the drug trade, traveling in dangerous places, and schmoozing with politicians. One might wonder if he is able to get along with others because he disguises what he thinks and feels from the people that he talks to, to the point where it is unclear where his loyalties lie. Even so, much of this book is worthwhile to read for the sheer enjoyment of seeing the author in peril or having to deal with countries where political violence and poverty are endemic. One feels a slightly less triumphant feeling when one realizes that one is planning to visit these precise areas, in which case one then begins to wonder what separates someone who is an adventuresome or even recklessly bold traveler from the ordinary person who merely reads about other people's experiences without feeling any sort of desire to travel to obscure and imperiled lands that the world has largely forgot.
[1] See, for example:
https://edgeinducedcohesion.blog/2017...
https://edgeinducedcohesion.blog/2010...
https://edgeinducedcohesion.blog/2017...
https://edgeinducedcohesion.blog/2017...
https://edgeinducedcohesion.blog/2017...
[2] https://edgeinducedcohesion.blog/2017...
October 27, 2020
Gimlette takes his sweet time, spending months to slowly explore the jungle kingdoms of Guyana, Suriname, and French Guiana. He finds the towns and communities strikingly colorful, filled with seriously oddball characters, but the whole setting is filled with ruins. Where wave after wave of colonists came, the jungle swallows all. The plantations disappear, and the former slaves live on as maroon communities, utterly suspicious of the outside world. In Amerindian country the jaguars reclaim their range and drive out cattle ranchers. The locals seek emigration in droves, and only the villagers from India or Java seem able to thrive on their own sustainable terms. I knew people were leaving the countryside behind in many areas of the world, but Gimlette's tour makes it seem like an ongoing route of civilization as we knew it.
September 8, 2013
Mad houses, prison islands, cult plantations, histories deep in colonisation, slavery and Jungle, with a pinch of the British and the Dutch, and a dollop of French (still being added), Guyana, Suriname and Guyane Francais are dissected and laid bare by John Gimlette.
With the aid of a colourful cast of taxi drivers and boat owners John ambles across these three territories on the edge of the new world, nestled in Brazil’s tangled hair and uncovers a bloody past of oppression and revolt where seemingly the only winner is the Jungle, that reclaims all, dismantling the grand houses and soaking up the blood of the fallen. It’s not all revolts and revenge though, the countries are almost comical, Suriname is spelt wrong by Voltaire, and subsequently by the French, and even Gimlette’s map and the national airline spell it wrong.
I bought Wild Coast because of my love for South America. But while I was reading it I realised not only had I not been, I didn’t actually want to go to any of the three countries, well two, Guyane is actually a departement of France, (the largest chunk of the European Union detached from the whole) and I wondered why I was a hundred pages in. It wasn’t Gimlette, he is a shrewd observer, and he seems to trawl through an enormous amount of background reading before and during the trip, allowing him to cleverly reconstruct the past while commenting on the present. It doesn’t shy away from asking locals questions and spends time chasing up local politicians, former dictators while immersing himself in the history and the hinterlands.
So while I won’t be booking a flight to Georgetown soon, I will be checking out his other travel books.
As for the Guyana’s and Suriname, it seems the title sums them up best. Wild Coast is worth reading, for the history of a place you probably know nothing about, from the origin of talkie-talkie, why there are african tribes with names like MacDonalds and McLeods and why France sent a colony of Spacemen to a corner of South America.
(blog review here)
With the aid of a colourful cast of taxi drivers and boat owners John ambles across these three territories on the edge of the new world, nestled in Brazil’s tangled hair and uncovers a bloody past of oppression and revolt where seemingly the only winner is the Jungle, that reclaims all, dismantling the grand houses and soaking up the blood of the fallen. It’s not all revolts and revenge though, the countries are almost comical, Suriname is spelt wrong by Voltaire, and subsequently by the French, and even Gimlette’s map and the national airline spell it wrong.
I bought Wild Coast because of my love for South America. But while I was reading it I realised not only had I not been, I didn’t actually want to go to any of the three countries, well two, Guyane is actually a departement of France, (the largest chunk of the European Union detached from the whole) and I wondered why I was a hundred pages in. It wasn’t Gimlette, he is a shrewd observer, and he seems to trawl through an enormous amount of background reading before and during the trip, allowing him to cleverly reconstruct the past while commenting on the present. It doesn’t shy away from asking locals questions and spends time chasing up local politicians, former dictators while immersing himself in the history and the hinterlands.
So while I won’t be booking a flight to Georgetown soon, I will be checking out his other travel books.
As for the Guyana’s and Suriname, it seems the title sums them up best. Wild Coast is worth reading, for the history of a place you probably know nothing about, from the origin of talkie-talkie, why there are african tribes with names like MacDonalds and McLeods and why France sent a colony of Spacemen to a corner of South America.
(blog review here)
June 5, 2025
I like John Gimlette, and Wild Coast: Travels on South America's Untamed Edge was an enjoyable, mostly riverine, journey through Guyana, Suriname, and French Guiana. Gimlette brought a lot of history to light across three countries with unique, difficult pasts. I've become fascinated with Guyana and Suriname over the past year, precisely because (both) "feel like several dozen countries stuffed into one," as Gimlette puts it. Despite a little frustration, explained below, I enjoyed "Wild Coast." It surprised me to learn how the major colonial powers all had a hand in Guyana and Suriname. I wasn't aware that the Dutch were implicated in Guyana and the British in Suriname. And I certainly hadn't realized that Scots ended up in Suriname! What a fascinating melting pot. All three countries are scarred by the legacy of slavery, and to boot, French Guiana was a longtime prison colony. Gimlette spends much time in the interior, meeting Maroons and telling their gripping history, as well as indigenous tribes. Because most of my reading about these countries involves cuisine and modern history, I appreciated his look back.
However, as with Gimlette's book about Madagascar, I inevitably Googled things that he mentioned and sometimes found worrisome inaccuracy on the details. I don't think it's easy to be perfect on all the facts for lesser-known countries, but a little proofing could go a long way. And this is a very small thing, but he could have better oriented readers geographically--referencing "upriver" and "downriver" without context isn't super helpful.
However, as with Gimlette's book about Madagascar, I inevitably Googled things that he mentioned and sometimes found worrisome inaccuracy on the details. I don't think it's easy to be perfect on all the facts for lesser-known countries, but a little proofing could go a long way. And this is a very small thing, but he could have better oriented readers geographically--referencing "upriver" and "downriver" without context isn't super helpful.
July 6, 2011
I always approach a new writer of literary travel books with some trepidation, having read so many excellent ones over the years and having found that more recent entrants to the genre are often not up to the mark. However, Gimlette is definitely an exception - and to be fair to him ,although it's the first book of his I've read, he has at least one other travel book under his belt. The impressive thing about this one is that he really takes time to get to know a country or region - several months in this case - and this is unusual. Also, he's a hardy traveller (or at least gives a good impression of one) always willing to jump into a duggout to enter some forgotten corner of rainforest. These countries are fascinating, and difficult to do justice to as penetrating the interiors of all three is a major task. He accomplishes it well, investigating old and not so old turmoils, massacres and disappearances. He stays remarkably positive - he doesn't take the easy route of castigating the backwardness of everyone around him. He conveys what appears to be a genuine affection for the places and for many of the people. He enjoys and gives a powerful sense of their diversity. Naturally, he doesn't back away from criticising the colonial powers, and there are plenty of reasons for his criticisms. If I were ever to go to the Guyanas, this is the book I would use as my companion.
December 13, 2012
I loved this book when I started reading it - it took me right back to the three months I spent in Guyana years ago, and I savoured every page. I got halfway through, then had to put it down for a week or so, and for some reason when I picked it up again I struggled with the second half. I think he lost his reason for travelling through the second two countries (Suriname and French Guyana); there was more history and less sense of adventure. I didn't feel he was driven by anything much apart from the need to finish the trip. I kept thinking 'Why's he doing this?', and once you start to think like that, the magic has gone. It's probably my fault for not reading it all in one go. He's a brilliant writer.
October 26, 2015
Yay! A book full of history (which I like), abundant with gorgeous scenery (which I like) of places I travelled (which I like) almost at the same time the writer of this book was there.
Thoroughly enjoyable!
It would have been nice to have read this book before, or while traveling there, but hey, we can't have it all.
It is great to recognize all the places and learn more about them and what formed them.
Surely the Guianas and Suriname are amongst my weirdest destinations ever and even years later are a certain hit for colourful stories.
Fernweh galore!
Thoroughly enjoyable!
It would have been nice to have read this book before, or while traveling there, but hey, we can't have it all.
It is great to recognize all the places and learn more about them and what formed them.
Surely the Guianas and Suriname are amongst my weirdest destinations ever and even years later are a certain hit for colourful stories.
Fernweh galore!
June 19, 2012
I loved Gimlette's "Theatre of Fish" covering his travels in Newfoundland and Labrador, but Gimlette's quirky writing style didn't work for me in this one. Some of it is my unfamiliarity with Guyana, Suriname and French Guyana, some of it is the brutal history of these places is just plain unpleasant to read about.
August 17, 2018
A hard to read travel book, never knew one could exist.
September 5, 2022
Północny skrawek Ameryki Południowej, czyli Gujana, Surinam i Gujana Francuska, jakże odległe, jakże dzikie, nieodkryte, dziewicze, przez co tajemnicze i fascynujące dla czytelnika. Dżungla, bagna ciągnące się po horyzont, tysiące rzek, państwa doświadczone wieloma wojnami (jak choćby 9 wojen między Francją, Holandią i Wielką Brytanią o terytorium)- właśnie to postanowił opisać John Gimlette udając się na "koniec świata". Autor wyrusza w podróż śladami jednego ze swoich przodków, który żył 3,5 wieku temu. To właśnie postać przodka stanowi swego rodzaju klamrę, czyli początek i zakończenie książki- ciekawy zamysł.
Doceniam wnikliwe i wszechstronne przygotowanie tematyczne autora do podróży, dzięki czemu od strony historycznej czy politycznej jest to wyczerpująca temat książka. Dla mnie osobiście tej historii było zdecydowanie za wiele, co powodowało znużenie i rozproszenie podczas czytania. Zabrakło mi równowagi między historią a teraźniejszością. Zabrakło prawdziwej przygody i choćby kilku kolorowych zdjęć z podróży. Owszem, świetne opisy pozwalają czytelnikowi zobrazować sobie wiele, ale kilka fotografii zdecydowanie by to ułatwiło i uprzyjemniło.
Jako źródło informacji- świetna książka, jako rozrywka- niekoniecznie.
Doceniam wnikliwe i wszechstronne przygotowanie tematyczne autora do podróży, dzięki czemu od strony historycznej czy politycznej jest to wyczerpująca temat książka. Dla mnie osobiście tej historii było zdecydowanie za wiele, co powodowało znużenie i rozproszenie podczas czytania. Zabrakło mi równowagi między historią a teraźniejszością. Zabrakło prawdziwej przygody i choćby kilku kolorowych zdjęć z podróży. Owszem, świetne opisy pozwalają czytelnikowi zobrazować sobie wiele, ale kilka fotografii zdecydowanie by to ułatwiło i uprzyjemniło.
Jako źródło informacji- świetna książka, jako rozrywka- niekoniecznie.
February 4, 2019
I did not read The Wild Coast hot off the press---I bought it at a used book sale at our public library in 2018. I'm a sucker for travel/questing tales, especially about areas I know nothing about. Lots of readers are woefully ignorant of the Wild Coast. I am truly thankful for Gimlette’s efforts, despite some dang quirky phrasings and some unfortunate omissions. He traveled to the Guianas on the little-known north coast of South America. He followed sources from past travelers-- Sir Walter Raleigh to Evelyn Waugh to prison artist LaGrange. So the author deserves kudos. He was inspired to explore by an ancestor of his who died there. Thank you for sharing, Mr. Gimlette.
I must add my opinion that this travel book is tragically Eurocentric, for the most part ignoring the “elephant in the living room,” the many South Asian people of Suriname and Guyana and their histories. He briefly mentions that all these Indians, about half the population, landed between 1838 and 1917. “It was an exodus in reverse, a flight into bondage.” (p. 32) That’s that? Do “coolies” not have stories worth telling? I don’t want to overemphasize this flaw because Gimlette's goal was to retrace the steps of European ancestors. How cool it would have been to have editorial input from the South Asians and other groups of people who landed in the Guianas and stayed. Just sayin'.
I must add my opinion that this travel book is tragically Eurocentric, for the most part ignoring the “elephant in the living room,” the many South Asian people of Suriname and Guyana and their histories. He briefly mentions that all these Indians, about half the population, landed between 1838 and 1917. “It was an exodus in reverse, a flight into bondage.” (p. 32) That’s that? Do “coolies” not have stories worth telling? I don’t want to overemphasize this flaw because Gimlette's goal was to retrace the steps of European ancestors. How cool it would have been to have editorial input from the South Asians and other groups of people who landed in the Guianas and stayed. Just sayin'.
July 5, 2022
Gimlette knows how to write a book that's worthwhile - his amazing eye for detail, ability to knock generalizations out of the park, thoughtful and caring attitude while maintaining near complete honesty and amazing references/footnotes . . . . 'Wild Coast' was a riveting read to which I anticipated all day. Discovered that 'To have a gimlet eye or to cast a gimlet eye means to stare at someone or something in a piercing manner, or to stare in an extremely watchful manner. The term gimlet eye is derived from the gimlet, a small piercing or boring tool first used in the mid-1300s bore holes in wood without splitting. The term gimlet eye came into use in the mid-1700s.' Fantastic read - not so much 'travel' [but it's in there] and 'adventure' but first-person account of wrestling with the unknown. Amazing author blessed with gimlet eye.
November 30, 2023
I've liked other books by the author, and long curious about the region, decided to try this one. Travel narrative worked well, but was a bit bores by the history in places. Good that he went beyond the settled coastal regions to see interior locations mentioned in colonial history, as well as the more recent Jonestown and Devil's Island. Britain and Netherlands basically gave up on their holdings, finding the chaotic (shall we say) post-exit situations unworkable; most folks left in those places either cannot or choose not to leave. French Guyana, though legally as French as downtown Paris, has the surface trappings of the main country, but in a paternal, colonial sense.
Rounded up from 3.5 stars really, where I understand others' frustrations with Gimlette's approach. At times it felt as though the history padded out not enough modern travel experience for a full-length book.
Rounded up from 3.5 stars really, where I understand others' frustrations with Gimlette's approach. At times it felt as though the history padded out not enough modern travel experience for a full-length book.
September 27, 2018
A comprehensive, historical and cultural journey through one of the most mysterious areas on the planet. Gimlette manages to provide vivid insight into every historical chareacter involved with the colonisation and independence of Guyana, Suriname and French Guiana.
Being half Guyanese , it was interesting to learn so much about the mixed cultures and races that comprise the population. This book was the first of many that began my journey of self-discovery. His choice of language makes you feel as though you are there with him paddling down the Essequibo with nothing but dense vegetation on either side.
A fantastic read.
Being half Guyanese , it was interesting to learn so much about the mixed cultures and races that comprise the population. This book was the first of many that began my journey of self-discovery. His choice of language makes you feel as though you are there with him paddling down the Essequibo with nothing but dense vegetation on either side.
A fantastic read.
November 13, 2017
Ages ago I was looking for books about travels in the Guianas, and there just weren't that many. But this book made my list.
Overall an enjoyable ride - the author seemed to be together and did his research, although he was so British I had to look up a couple of things he said. The historical context was very helpful for me - I hadn't realized how rich the area had been at one time. I found the trip fascinating and the author very amenable. (Honestly, he reminded me of Tim Butcher.)
Overall an enjoyable ride - the author seemed to be together and did his research, although he was so British I had to look up a couple of things he said. The historical context was very helpful for me - I hadn't realized how rich the area had been at one time. I found the trip fascinating and the author very amenable. (Honestly, he reminded me of Tim Butcher.)
July 11, 2019
Świetny reportaż z podróży po rejonie, w który reportażyści nieczęsto się zapędzają. Trzy Gujany, trzy zupełnie różne państwa o różnej historii i teraźniejszości. Gimlette pisze lekko, w fajny sposób płynie przez wszystkie ważne tematy - symbole poszczególnych krajów i regionów. Czy przenosi czytelnika w lata 70 opisując Jamestown; czy do XIX wieku opisując kolonie karne w Kajennie; czy też analizuje wojnę domową w Surinamie - wszystko to robi bardzo solidnie, szczegółowo i bardzo obrazowo. Bez dwóch zdań: najlepsza lektura o Gujanie Angielskiej, Holenderskiej i Francuskiej.
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