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The Gold Machine: Tracking the Ancestors from Highlands to Coffee Colony
A journey through time and space, grappling with the ghosts of empire
A New Statesman Book of the Year, 2021
‘Follow Iain Sinclair into the cloud jungles of Peru and emerge questioning all that seemed so solid and immutable.’ Barry Miles
From the award-winning author of The Last London and Lights Out for the Territory , a journey in the footsteps of our ancestors.
Iain Sinclair and his daughter travel through Peru, guided by – and in reaction to – an ill-fated colonial expedition led by his great-grandfather. The family history of a displaced Scottish highlander fades into the brutal reality of a major land grab. The historic thirst for gold and the establishment of sprawling coffee plantations leave terrible wounds on virgin territory.
In Sinclair’s haunting prose, no place escapes its past, and nor can we.
‘ The Gold Machine is a trip, a psychoactive expedition in compelling company.’ TLS
A New Statesman Book of the Year, 2021
‘Follow Iain Sinclair into the cloud jungles of Peru and emerge questioning all that seemed so solid and immutable.’ Barry Miles
From the award-winning author of The Last London and Lights Out for the Territory , a journey in the footsteps of our ancestors.
Iain Sinclair and his daughter travel through Peru, guided by – and in reaction to – an ill-fated colonial expedition led by his great-grandfather. The family history of a displaced Scottish highlander fades into the brutal reality of a major land grab. The historic thirst for gold and the establishment of sprawling coffee plantations leave terrible wounds on virgin territory.
In Sinclair’s haunting prose, no place escapes its past, and nor can we.
‘ The Gold Machine is a trip, a psychoactive expedition in compelling company.’ TLS
- GenresTravelNonfictionHistory
432 pages, Paperback
First published January 1, 2021
11 people are currently reading
226 people want to read
About the author
Iain Sinclair
120 books342 followersIain Sinclair is a British writer and film maker. Much of his work is rooted in London, most recently within the influences of psychogeography.
Sinclair's education includes studies at Trinity College, Dublin, where he edited Icarus, the Courtauld Institute of Art (University of London), and the London School of Film Technique (now the London Film School).
His early work was mostly poetry, much of it published by his own small press, Albion Village Press. He was (and remains) closely connected with the British avantgarde poetry scene of the 1960s and 1970s – authors such as J.H. Prynne, Douglas Oliver, Peter Ackroyd and Brian Catling are often quoted in his work and even turn up in fictionalized form as characters; later on, taking over from John Muckle, Sinclair edited the Paladin Poetry Series and, in 1996, the Picador anthology Conductors of Chaos.
His early books Lud Heat (1975) and Suicide Bridge (1979) were a mixture of essay, fiction and poetry; they were followed by White Chappell, Scarlet Tracings (1987), a novel juxtaposing the tale of a disreputable band of bookdealers on the hunt for a priceless copy of Arthur Conan Doyle's A Study in Scarlet and the Jack the Ripper murders (here attributed to the physician William Gull).
Sinclair was for some time perhaps best known for the novel Downriver (1991), which won the James Tait Black Memorial Prize and the 1992 Encore Award. It envisages the UK under the rule of the Widow, a grotesque version of Margaret Thatcher as viewed by her harshest critics, who supposedly establishes a one party state in a fifth term. The volume of essays Lights Out for the Territory gained Sinclair a wider readership by treating the material of his novels in non-fiction form. His essay 'Sorry Meniscus' (1999) ridicules the Millennium Dome. In 1997, he collaborated with Chris Petit, sculptor Steve Dilworth, and others to make The Falconer, a 56 minute semi-fictional 'documentary' film set in London and the Outer Hebrides about the British underground filmmaker Peter Whitehead. It also features Stewart Home, Kathy Acker and Howard Marks.
One of his most recent works and part of a series focused around London is the non-fiction London Orbital; the hard cover edition was published in 2002, along with a documentary film of the same name and subject. It describes a series of trips he took tracing the M25, London's outer-ring motorway, on foot. Sinclair followed this with Edge of the Orison, a psychogeographical reconstruction of the poet John Clare's walk from Dr Matthew Allen's private lunatic asylum, at Fairmead House, High Beach, in the centre of Epping Forest in Essex, to his home in Helpston, near Peterborough. Sinclair also writes about Claybury Asylum, another psychiatric hospital in Essex, in Rodinsky's Room, a collaboration with the artist Rachel Lichtenstein.
Much of Sinclair's recent work consists of an ambitious and elaborate literary recuperation of the so-called occultist psychogeography of London. Other psychogeographers who have worked on similar material include Will Self, Stewart Home and the London Psychogeographical Association. In 2008 he wrote the introduction to Wide Boys Never Work, the London Books reissue of Robert Westerby's classic London low-life novel. Hackney, That Rose-Red Empire: A Confidential Report followed in 2009.
In an interview with This Week in Science, William Gibson said that Sinclair was his favourite author.
Iain Sinclair lives in Haggerston, in the London Borough of Hackney, and has a flat in Hastings, East Sussex.
Sinclair's education includes studies at Trinity College, Dublin, where he edited Icarus, the Courtauld Institute of Art (University of London), and the London School of Film Technique (now the London Film School).
His early work was mostly poetry, much of it published by his own small press, Albion Village Press. He was (and remains) closely connected with the British avantgarde poetry scene of the 1960s and 1970s – authors such as J.H. Prynne, Douglas Oliver, Peter Ackroyd and Brian Catling are often quoted in his work and even turn up in fictionalized form as characters; later on, taking over from John Muckle, Sinclair edited the Paladin Poetry Series and, in 1996, the Picador anthology Conductors of Chaos.
His early books Lud Heat (1975) and Suicide Bridge (1979) were a mixture of essay, fiction and poetry; they were followed by White Chappell, Scarlet Tracings (1987), a novel juxtaposing the tale of a disreputable band of bookdealers on the hunt for a priceless copy of Arthur Conan Doyle's A Study in Scarlet and the Jack the Ripper murders (here attributed to the physician William Gull).
Sinclair was for some time perhaps best known for the novel Downriver (1991), which won the James Tait Black Memorial Prize and the 1992 Encore Award. It envisages the UK under the rule of the Widow, a grotesque version of Margaret Thatcher as viewed by her harshest critics, who supposedly establishes a one party state in a fifth term. The volume of essays Lights Out for the Territory gained Sinclair a wider readership by treating the material of his novels in non-fiction form. His essay 'Sorry Meniscus' (1999) ridicules the Millennium Dome. In 1997, he collaborated with Chris Petit, sculptor Steve Dilworth, and others to make The Falconer, a 56 minute semi-fictional 'documentary' film set in London and the Outer Hebrides about the British underground filmmaker Peter Whitehead. It also features Stewart Home, Kathy Acker and Howard Marks.
One of his most recent works and part of a series focused around London is the non-fiction London Orbital; the hard cover edition was published in 2002, along with a documentary film of the same name and subject. It describes a series of trips he took tracing the M25, London's outer-ring motorway, on foot. Sinclair followed this with Edge of the Orison, a psychogeographical reconstruction of the poet John Clare's walk from Dr Matthew Allen's private lunatic asylum, at Fairmead House, High Beach, in the centre of Epping Forest in Essex, to his home in Helpston, near Peterborough. Sinclair also writes about Claybury Asylum, another psychiatric hospital in Essex, in Rodinsky's Room, a collaboration with the artist Rachel Lichtenstein.
Much of Sinclair's recent work consists of an ambitious and elaborate literary recuperation of the so-called occultist psychogeography of London. Other psychogeographers who have worked on similar material include Will Self, Stewart Home and the London Psychogeographical Association. In 2008 he wrote the introduction to Wide Boys Never Work, the London Books reissue of Robert Westerby's classic London low-life novel. Hackney, That Rose-Red Empire: A Confidential Report followed in 2009.
In an interview with This Week in Science, William Gibson said that Sinclair was his favourite author.
Iain Sinclair lives in Haggerston, in the London Borough of Hackney, and has a flat in Hastings, East Sussex.
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Displaying 1 - 9 of 9 reviews
May 14, 2024
The Corporation moved smoothly from guano to railways.
Months before Covid, Sinclair and his daughter went to Peru, following the trail made by Sinclair's great-grandfather Arthur Sinclair in the late 19C. Thus begins a walk in the woods regarding imperialism, cultural appropriation and ultimately if parenthetically plague and legacy. There are numerous digressions involving Bruce Chatwin and Werner Herzog along with the mystics of Imperialism Arthur Rimbaud and Joseph Conrad. The rank and file of exile and racial longing are presented in panorama. Matters become anthropological and the observer is stricken with self-awareness, a pestilence of privilege.
This isn't the best Sinclair, but it is a moving meditation, a personal one regarding his own ancestors and his present family.
Months before Covid, Sinclair and his daughter went to Peru, following the trail made by Sinclair's great-grandfather Arthur Sinclair in the late 19C. Thus begins a walk in the woods regarding imperialism, cultural appropriation and ultimately if parenthetically plague and legacy. There are numerous digressions involving Bruce Chatwin and Werner Herzog along with the mystics of Imperialism Arthur Rimbaud and Joseph Conrad. The rank and file of exile and racial longing are presented in panorama. Matters become anthropological and the observer is stricken with self-awareness, a pestilence of privilege.
This isn't the best Sinclair, but it is a moving meditation, a personal one regarding his own ancestors and his present family.
October 26, 2022
I'm a committed fan of Mr Sinclair's work, just addicted to his distinctive prose style. In this book he follows the traces of his great-grandfather Arthur Sinclair's journey through Peru prospecting sites for cultivation of coffee and generally upholding the British Empire's reputation for stealing from the native population for profit (Sinclair senior I mean).
April 27, 2023
It's a strange feeling, reading about yourself in someone's book. My sister and I met Iain Sinclair, his wife Anna and daughter Farne, when we went on a trip to the UK in 2019. We talked about family mostly. My sister and I were going to spend most of our time in Scotland. We looked into visiting Banff but it was too difficult to get to by public transport.
Coincidently, I was reading the Electric Cool Aid Acid Test at the same time as The Gold Machine. Unplanned. But I noticed strange similarities. Both authors are Ginsberg fanboys and it was interesting how they each approached him. Both authors are at opposite extremes. Sinclair crams a lot of detail into a small amount of space (I imagined a small box with Sinclair punching down content to fit), whereas Wolfe gets a whole chapter out of the visits to the gas station toilets on the corner of the block the ex-hotel is on.
My great great grandfather, Arther Sinclair, despised the Australian attraction to gambling. He would not have been surprised to know that gambling was allowed on Anzac Day, while visiting supermarkets was not. It's relevant to note that my great great grandfather's family were displaced during the Highland Clearances. Yet he repeated the dispossession - enclosing the land and displacing the indigenous peoples. It demonstrates that the dispossessed often mete dispossession for others. It is a form of inherited trauma.
However, there is no getting away from the fact that my great great grandfather facilitated rainforest destruction. For this I feel ancestor guilt. I donate regularly to rainforest4.org. This organisation has a buyback scheme where rainforest property is purchased and added to the national protected parks and given to the indigenous people to manage in partnership. If you can donate, please do!!
Coincidently, I was reading the Electric Cool Aid Acid Test at the same time as The Gold Machine. Unplanned. But I noticed strange similarities. Both authors are Ginsberg fanboys and it was interesting how they each approached him. Both authors are at opposite extremes. Sinclair crams a lot of detail into a small amount of space (I imagined a small box with Sinclair punching down content to fit), whereas Wolfe gets a whole chapter out of the visits to the gas station toilets on the corner of the block the ex-hotel is on.
My great great grandfather, Arther Sinclair, despised the Australian attraction to gambling. He would not have been surprised to know that gambling was allowed on Anzac Day, while visiting supermarkets was not. It's relevant to note that my great great grandfather's family were displaced during the Highland Clearances. Yet he repeated the dispossession - enclosing the land and displacing the indigenous peoples. It demonstrates that the dispossessed often mete dispossession for others. It is a form of inherited trauma.
However, there is no getting away from the fact that my great great grandfather facilitated rainforest destruction. For this I feel ancestor guilt. I donate regularly to rainforest4.org. This organisation has a buyback scheme where rainforest property is purchased and added to the national protected parks and given to the indigenous people to manage in partnership. If you can donate, please do!!
February 6, 2024
What in the world did I just read?
This was Sinclair’s stream of consciousness where he shares everything he could possibly think about words that he associates with Peru.
For example, somewhere around page 400, he detailed the life of a man who used his great-grandfather’s (common sounding) name as a stage name. For a while, I thought that Arthur Sinclair became an actor after his travels, but no, this was the life of a totally unrelated man who had no connection to Peru, coffee, colonizers, writing, and Iain or Arthur Sinclair.
I had some quotes saved to share for a review, but I’m just tired of this bloated snooze fest.
This was a case of no matter, more overwrought art.
This was Sinclair’s stream of consciousness where he shares everything he could possibly think about words that he associates with Peru.
For example, somewhere around page 400, he detailed the life of a man who used his great-grandfather’s (common sounding) name as a stage name. For a while, I thought that Arthur Sinclair became an actor after his travels, but no, this was the life of a totally unrelated man who had no connection to Peru, coffee, colonizers, writing, and Iain or Arthur Sinclair.
I had some quotes saved to share for a review, but I’m just tired of this bloated snooze fest.
This was a case of no matter, more overwrought art.
June 20, 2023
As is often the case with Iain Sinclair's work, he walks in the footsteps of grand forebears both fictional and factual, ancient and contemporary. But in this book, he walks in the long shadow of his forebears his Great Grandfather Arthur Sinclair, who made the journey to Peru to set up a coffee plantation.
December 1, 2024
Love Sinclair's urban rambles as social criticism. Here he retraces steps of his great grandfather, classic British exploiter of Peru (silver, coffee) and other colonial follies. Sinclair always serves up digressions, but a couple too many in this book, but fun nonetheless.
December 13, 2025
This book was very confusing and hard to read, but sometimes it’s good to read books like that. I’m not quite sure this was one of those times
July 5, 2023
Brilliant evocative and enlightening
September 3, 2023
There’s an interesting story here about a family retracing their colonizer ancestor’s Amazon river journey, but you have to wade through a lot of bizarre literary asides
Displaying 1 - 9 of 9 reviews