Short description
Alex Fox is going to recreate the world. He abandons civilization and takes the family to live in the Honduran jungle. There his tortured genius keeps them alive, his tirades carrying them through a diseased and dirty Eden towards an unimaginable darkness.
Long description
Allie Fox is going to re-create the world. Abominating the cops, crooks, junkies and scavengers of modern America, he abandons civilization and takes the family to live in the Honduran jungle. There his tortured, messianic genius keeps them alive, his hoarse tirades harrying them through a diseased and dirty Eden towards unimaginable darkness. 'An epic of paranoid obsession that swirls the reader headlong to deposit him on a mudbank of horror' - Christopher Wordsworth, Guardian .
Review
Allie Fox is allergic to the whole big, bad consumerist mess that constitutes the late 20th century so he abandons modern America, dragging his family to the depths of the Honduran jungle to escape. His inventiveness and know-it-all arrogance enable him to carve out his own vision of self-sufficiency from the jungle, creating an ice-making plant to amaze the natives. He ignores the power and blind cruelty of nature, creating his own disaster while the jungle reclaims what it had lost. This won the James Tait Black Memorial Prize and was made into a film in 1986 by Pete Weir. (Kirkus UK)