PAUL THEROUX's highly acclaimed novels include Blinding Light, Hotel Honolulu, My Other Life, Kowloon Tong, and The Mosquito Coast. His travel books include Ghost Train to the Eastern Star, Dark Star Safari, Riding the Iron Rooster, The Great Railway Bazaar, The Old Patagonian Express, and The Happy Isles of Oceania. He lives in Hawaii and on Cape Cod.

Paul Theroux never repeats himself and what he chooses to present in each book is quaranteed to surprise anyone who has read any of his other books. In this novel, part travelogue/adventure and part American social critique, the chief character is one of the most fascinating and least likeable figures I have encountered in recent fiction. An American genius with no patience for the opinions of anyone else and a hatred for most of modern life, determines to take his family into the jungles of South America, where he sees himself becoming something of a saviour to the natives - bringing them a few simple forms of technology that will uplift and transform their lives. Instead, he plunges himself and his family into a hell of conflicts that he doesn't even try to understand.
The story, told from the point of view of his initially adoring (and fearful) son, follows the decline in the family's fortunes until it is clear that it is the father himself who is their real enemy. A tragic and deeply moving tale, this book stays in the mind - not always pleasantly - long after it has been read.