Product Description

Charles Nicholl is on a quest for 'The Great Cocaine Story'. The time is the early eighties and the place - Colombia. The Fruit Palace, a dismal whitewashed cafe that legally dispenses tropical fruit juices, has another purpose as the meeting place for a variety of black market activities and the place where Nicholl unwittingly begins his quest. Nicholl relates his story with madcap energy and vividness as he careens from shantytowns and waterfront barrios to steamy jungle villages and slaughterhouses. He survives fever, earthquake, and discovery by a dealer who threatens to 'check his oil' with a knife. And he emerges with a tour de force that is a triumph of intrepid reporting and suspense - this is truly a classic travel book.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #240490 in Books
• Published on: 1998-05-07
• Original language: English
• Binding: Paperback
• 334 pages

Review
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)

In the early 1970's, Nicholl finds himself in the hot, seedy port city of Santa Marta on the Caribbean coast of Colombia. Renting a hammock for 10 pesos a night and downing the jugos made from the exotic local fruits, Nicholl is not above sampling the assortment of drugs that makes its way into South America's premier drug-smuggling capital. Twelve years later, back in England, Nicholl's publisher decides he's just the man to write the inside story on Colombia's cocaine trade - now a subject of worldwide interest. Nicholl knows the language, the country, the drug, and enough shady characters to give him a foothold in beginning his investigations. After touching down in Bogota, Nicholl tracks down an old acquaintance, an ex-journalist whom he finds holed up in a slum of the city - a large chunk of his leg having been carved out by drug dealers. Among other things, they wanted to permanently quash his interest in their operations and, more specifically, in a new supply of cocaine finding its way onto the Bogota market - the mysterious Snow White. Nicholl picks up the torch from his friend and shortly finds himself taking risks that far exceed his courage - and The Fruit Palace is off and running. As the cast of characters broadens, we meet the mules, the women who transport hundreds of pounds of drugs under the noses of US Customs officials; the cooks, who reduce the coca leaves into the sparkling white powder; the dealers; the users; the smugglers; and even the businessmen who earn millions off their illicit trade. But through it all, Nicholl never loses sight of the fact that his primary character is Colombia herself. Nicholl circles the country searching out, and occasionally running from, his story. And with him we travel down the muddy rivers of the Choco, climb into pristine mountain villages, swim in the clear waters of the Caribbean and frolic amidst the corruption and seamy glitter of the big cities. Nicholl is a very good writer, and he brings to life the people and places of this troubled country. The book is travel writing at its best, and Nicholl's investigations into the drug trade (although at times stretching the credulity of the reader) lend the book a comedy and tension that give it the taste and pleasure of fiction. (Kirkus Reviews)

From the Publisher
Fruit Palace was reissued in 2004

About the Author
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.

Customer Reviews

the fruit palace
This book is a rare thing.There is something of the streetwise combined the well read.It puts you in a space between the world of the conformist and the outlaw.People can only critisize the sincerity of the story but even that only adds to beautiful prose-like seedy imagery in this unreal chaotic reality.It rocks.

Glamorising the pre-Pablo Escobar Colombian Cocaine Business
This book is undoubtedly one of the most entertaining written on the Colombian contribution to the illicit drugs industry, but should be read with some caution. The book was written prior to the ascent of the Medillin and Cali Cartels and this shows clearly in the book. The book gives the distinct impression that the journalist is being funny and supposedly intrepid in his quest for the Great Cocaine Story at the expense of Colombia and the people who have to put up with having the Great Cocaine Story in their back yard and who are the real victims of the supposedly victimless crime of taking drugs. The book is also quite dated - the daring do would have been impossible in the last twenty years, and this does need to be borne in mind reading the book.

I have read this book twice. The first time was over two years ago, and the second was just a couple of weeks ago. In the interim I have moved to live in Colombia and have now lived here for two years and had to put up with the conditions that are used in the typical manner of travel books to prove how entertainingly corrupt the natives are (and by implication, inferior), by people who will be leaving the country in just a couple of weeks.

Despite the above if you treat this book as an entertaining and not particularly true picture of Colombia, ie just as a good read, the book is worthwhile even if it does fall into the usual traps of travel writing. But be warned - Colombia has changed tremendously in the least two decades.

Subtle blend of travelogue and political observations
The Fruit Palace is unusual in travel book terms as it is written by someone who can actually write in an engaging style.

I have read fewer novels with a better opening - a sting in a bar that sets the tone for the atmosphere in Columbia for a westerner.

Nicholls combines adventurism with a poetic appreciation of the people, their culture and country. His trail has a sense of doom about it - Columbia seems to have a lot of characters pursuing ever diminishing circles of lives. Yet one is left with an overall sense of beauty and the unexpected which only such a level headed observer such as Nicholl could give the reader.

Enough to make you want to go.