Abruptly expelled from his farm in Ecuador at the age of sixty-two, Moritz Thomsen indulges in that saddest of pleasures – travel – taking a trip to Brazil and ultimately a journey up the great Amazon River by boat. 

Assaulted by ghosts and memories at every turn, as his journey unfolds he re-examines his life to understand how he came to be living a life of self-imposed poverty and hardship.  Outwardly he sails up the Amazon towards Manaus, giving us poignant and limpid descriptions of the river, yet inwardly a shattering romantic symphony rages, running from the depths of human misery to life’s small but exquisite transcendent pleasures. He spares the reader nothing.

‘… seldom do you see the cultured, civilized, widely read American in the Third-World boondocks. Throughout his books, Thomsen says, but never explicitly, that going away made him a person, made him a writer. His subject is not suffering humanity, but rather loneliness and fellowship. He sees himself as the ultimate tramp … He remembers everything. His writing is not that of someone who is merely visiting, but that of a man who has taken root.’ Paul Theroux

‘… probably the purest travel book I’ve read in years.’  Anthony Quinn, The Observer