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Charles Nicholl has written two travel books, The Fruit Palace and Borderlines; a study of Elizabethan alchemy, The Chemical Theatre, and a biography of the pamphleteer Thomas Nashe, A Cup of News. He has also written a reconstruction of Sir Walter Ralegh's search for El Dorado, The Creature in the Map, and Somebody Else, which won the 1998 Hawthornden Prize. His work has appeared in Granta, Rolling Stone and the Independent.
This is a new edition of a book dating from the early 1970s, but it has stood the test of time: while the cocaine scene in Colombia may have changed, the excitement and fascination conjured up by Nicholl's string of first-hand accounts of his travels in South America have lost none of their flavour. Nicholl is 23, a self-proclaimed 'goggle eyed', calculating but charming American drug dealer. The book is packed full of idiosyncratic characters, from the 'half-crazed Scottish newspaper man Augustus McGregor' to the best drug-runner in the business 'who had walked cocaine through the US customs 43 times and never got caught'. Nicholl aims to emulate Beckett in presenting a bit of 'bottled climate' in his captivating account. The best dreams are those you wish would carry on forever, and this book is one which will keep any armchair traveller transfixed. (Kirkus UK)
