Beyond The Blue Horizon On the Track of Imperial Airways

Beyond the Blue Horizon

FRATER, ALEXANDER

Travel

Penguin Putnam~trade

Alexander Frater was born to a family of Scottish expatriates on the tiny island of Irikiki in the South Seas. Following his dreams of being a writer, Frater left home, but the call of the tropics compelled him to return again and again. Join him as he dines with the Queen of Tonga; makes his way through two civil wars; visits the spots where surfing and bungee jumping originated; and expresses his love for the region where he is at once a tourist, explorer, adventurer, and native son. From Tahiti to Thailand, Mexico to Mozambique, Frater gives us a richly described, endlessly surprising picture of this diverse, feverish, languorously beautiful world.

Tales from the Torrid Zone: Travels in the Deep Tropics (Vintage Departures)

Travel Writing

Vintage

Part memoir, part travelogue, Tales From the Torrid Zone is rooted in his birthplace, the tiny tropical republic of Vanuatu where his father ran its hospital and his mother, in her front garden, built its first school. From this obscure South Seas group he ranges over the hot, wet, beautiful swathe of the world that has haunted him ever since - dines with a tropical queen in a leper colony, makes his way across tropical Africa (and two civil wars) in a forty-four-year-old flying boat, delivers a new church bell to a remote Oceanian island and visits scores of countries to learn about their history, politics, medicine, flora and fauna (including the remarkable role of the coconut in tropical life). But, as becomes plain, the torrid zone is not just a geographical phenomenon, it's also a state of mind. The result is a witty, entertaining and immensely readable book from a fine storyteller.Part memoir, part travelogue, Tales From the Torrid Zone is rooted in Alex Frater's birthplace, the tiny tropical republic of Vanuatu where his father ran its hospital and his mother, in her front garden, built its first school. From this obscure South Seas group he ranges over the hot, wet, beautiful swathe of the world that has haunted him ever since - dines with a tropical queen in a leper colony, makes his way across tropical Africa (and two civil wars) in a forty-four-year-old flying boat, delivers a new church bell to a remote Oceanian island and visits scores of countries to learn about their history, politics, medicine, flora and fauna (including the remarkable role of the coconut in tropical life). But, as becomes plain, the torrid zone is not just a geographical phenomenon, it's also a state of mind. The result is a witty, entertaining and immensely readable book from a fine storyteller.

Tales from the Torrid Zone : Travels in the Deep Tropics

Specialty Travel

Picador

Alexander Frater's new book is about a small, largely forgotten group of young men who, early in the 20th Century, competed to build and fly England's first aeroplane.

The Balloon Factory: The Story of the Men Who Built Britain's First Flying Machines

History

Europe

Sm Quarto, PP.167, English Country Trains - A Railway Odyssey

Stopping-train Britain: A railway odyssey

Engineering & Transportation

Transportation

Hodder&Stoughton

An account of the author's two-month journey in 1987, chasing the summer monsoon through India, from its "burst" near the southernmost tip of the country to its grand finale in a remote hill town on the Bangladeshi border

Chasing The Monsoon

KNOPF

Beyond the blue horizon: On the track of Imperial Airways

In Beyond The Blue Horizon Alexander Frater reveals and relives the romance and breathtaking excitement of the legendary Imperial Airways Eastbound Empire service -- the world's longest and most adventurous scheduled air route. Written with an infectious passion, this is an extraordinarily original and genre-defining piece of travel writing by one of our most highly respected travel correspondents. 'Whether being mown down by stampeding Baghdad-bound passengers in Cairo airport, or battling with Indian Airline staff (and failing) to reconfirm six vital going-on flights from Delhi, or being lured unwittingly into a souvenir shop selling pornographic wood carvings in Lombok, or hitting tropical cyclones Ferdinand in a 748 en route from Sumba to Bali, Frater rises above it all with humour, style and a wonderfully sharp eye' Evening Standard

Beyond the Blue Horizon: On the Track of Imperial Airways

William Heineman

On 20th May the Indian summer monsoon will begin to envelop the country in two great wet arms, one coming from the east, the other from the west. They are untied over central India around 10th July, a date that can be calculated within seven or eight days. Frater aims to follow the monsoon, staying sometimes behind it, sometimes in front of it, and everywhere watching the impact of this extraordinary phenomenon. During the anxious period of waiting, the weather forecaster is king, consulted by pie-crested cockatoos, and a joyful period ensues: there is a period of promiscuity, and scandals proliferate. Frater's journey will take him to Bangkok and the cowboy town on the Thai- Malaysian border to Rangoon and Akyab in Burma (where the front funnels up between the mountains and the sea).

Chasing the Monsoon

Random House Value Publishing

An unclipped and unmarked copy in a Brodart cover.

Asia

From one of the most celebrated travel writers at work today—a vibrantly observant, witty, utterly captivating account of a lifetime’s worth of travel between the Tropics of Cancer and Capricorn. Part memoir, part travelogue, all passionate appreciation, Tales from the Torrid Zone begins in Iririki, Alexander Frater’s birthplace. On this tiny island in the South Seas republic of Vanuatu, his grandfather, a Presbyterian missionary from Scotland, converted the inhabitants, his father ran the hospital and his mother built its first schoolhouse in their front garden. And it was on Iririki where, on the eve of his sixth birthday, Frater fell victim to “le coup de bamboo . . . a mild form of tropical madness for which, luckily, there is no cure,” and which has compelled him, again and again, to return to the “seeding, breeding, buzzing, barking, fluttering, squawking, germinating, growing” deep tropics. His travels take him to nearly all of the eighty-eight countries encompassed by this remarkable, steamy swath of the world. He delves deeply into the history and politics of each nation he visits, and into the lives of the inhabitants, and of the flora and fauna. He is, at once, tourist, explorer and adventurer, as fascinated with—and fascinating about—the quotidian as he is with the extraordinary. But certainly, he does not lack for the extraordinary: dining with the Queen of Tonga in a leper colony; making his way across tropical Africa—and two civil wars—in a forty-four-year-old flying boat; delivering a new church bell to a remote Oceanian island. From Fiji to Laos, Mexico to Peru, Senegal to Uganda, Taiwan to Indonesia, Frater gives us a richly described, wonderfully anecdotal, endlessly surprising picture of this diverse, feverish, languorously beautiful world—as much a state of mind as it is a geographical phenomenon.

Tales from the Torrid Zone: Travels in the Deep Tropics

Alfred.A. Knopf

See the best price to sell, buy, or rent books by FRATER, ALEXANDER. BookScouter helps to compare book prices from 25+ online bookstores and 30+ buyback vendors with a single search.

Books by FRATER, ALEXANDER

See the best price to sell, buy, or rent books by FRATER, ALEXANDER. BookScouter helps to compare book prices from 25+ online bookstores and 30+ buyback vendors with a single search.

Beyond the Blue Horizon

Tales from the Torrid Zone: Travels in the Deep Tropics (Vintage Departures)

Tales from the Torrid Zone : Travels in the Deep Tropics

The Balloon Factory: The Story of the Men Who Built Britain's First Flying Machines

Stopping-train Britain: A railway odyssey

Chasing The Monsoon

Beyond the Blue Horizon: On the Track of Imperial Airways

Chasing the Monsoon

Chasing the Monsoon

Tales from the Torrid Zone: Travels in the Deep Tropics