This vivid and unforgettable expedition through the world of exotic fruit, from an author with “the talents of a food writer, investigative journalist, poet, travel writer, and humorist” (The New York Times Book Review), is being made into a documentary starring Bill Pullman. Delicious, lethal, hallucinogenic, and medicinal, fruits have led nations to war, fueled dictatorships, and lured people into new worlds. In lustrous prose, Adam Leith Gollner draws readers into a Willy Wonka-like world—mangoes that taste like piña coladas, peanut butter fruits, and the miracle fruit that turns everything sour to sweet—and brilliantly weaves together business, science, travel, and food into a riveting narrative.
Gollner examines the fruits we eat and explains why we eat them (the scientific, economic, and aesthetic reasons); traces the life of mass-produced fruits (how they are created, grown, and marketed) and explores the underworld of fruits that are inaccessible, ignored, and even forbidden in the Western world. Peopled with a cast of characters as varied and bizarre as the fruit it discussess—smugglers, inventors, explorers, and epicures—this extraordinary book can “fill a thousand and one summer nights with delightful reading” (The Miami Herald).
“This is a fascinating chronicle of strange and wonderful food….Written with verve and ripe with detail, Gollner is certain to do for rare fruit what Susan Orlean did for rare orchids.”
