Overview

From best-selling author of The Africa House - the extraordinary story of a very English lady in the world's largest rainforest Everything that grows in Brazil seems several times larger than anywhere else on earth. Leaves unfurl the size of tablecloths, roots swell thick and grainy as elephants legs, flowers are pouting and voluptuous, plants that belong to the beginning of time. The Amazon is home to more species than any other country in the world - an estimated 90,000 plants - only a fraction of which are known today. Many of those were discovered, named, and painted by Margaret Mee - the first female explorer of the Amazon. Born in 1909, Margarat Mee was a painter, socialist and espouser of causes. Glamorous and bohemian, with flame-red hair, she fled the misery of post-war London, and her first husband, and travelled to Brazil. The obscene plenty of the Amazon and its plants became a lifelong obsession and this tiny, birdlike Englishwoman was to make 15 expeditions into uncharted rainforest, disappearing into the jungle for months at a time, often completely alone. Paddling up tributaries in her canoe, she caught malaria and hepatitis, was attacked by giant anacondas and vampire bats, fled from jaguars and illegal goldminers and came into contact with Indians who had never seen a white man, let alone an English woman. Her mission however was to discover and to paint as many of the Amazon's plant species as possible. She became a celebrated botanist and expert for both Kew Gardens and the Smithsonian Institute. She was also the first leading spokesman in the Save the Amazon campaign -- the destruction of the forest horrified her. She captured the hearts and souls of the Brazilian nation and had a parade dedicated to her memory at the Rio carnival - the greatest honour that Cariocas can bestow. Beautifully produced using many of Mee's own paintings, Christina Lamb's glorious storytelling brings this extraordinary woman back to life.

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9780007116560

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Reviews

'Marvellous' Independent 'Amazing story of high hopes, lost love and ruined lives' Sunday Times 'This book is in the best tradition of classics by British adventurers such as Robert Byron, Peter Levi and Eric Newby. In fact, Lamb's empathy for the people she meets is such that her writing outdoes that of her stuffier male forebears. For Lamb, the country is more than just magnificent landscape and proud history. She has a long perspective from which to observe what she sees, having made a trip into Soviet-occupied Afghanistan at the end of the 1980s with a young Hamid Karzai, now the country's dapper president! Her book boasts genuine journalistic exposes as well: she tracks down a Taliban torturer and discovers the Herat literary classes which, masquerading as sewing circles, concealed their activities from the religious police. After receiving a series of heartfelt letters about life in Kabul under the Taliban, she hunts for the young woman who wrote them.' Daily Telegraph 'Award-winning foreign correspondent Christina Lamb has written an inspiring and moving account of Afghanistan's plight! Lamb shows that, despite attempts to crush the country and its culture, its soul remains uncrushed.' Independent on Sunday 'Deeply penetrating, informative and always engaging! Through the dispiriting events under which Afghanistan continues to be submerged, Lamb continually finds delightful people who have latched on to the fact that Faith is an ecclesiastical word for credulity, and offer some hope for the country's future.' FT

'Marvellous' Independent 'Amazing story of high hopes, lost love and ruined lives' Sunday Times 'This book is in the best tradition of classics by British adventurers such as Robert Byron, Peter Levi and Eric Newby. In fact, Lamb's empathy for the people she meets is such that her writing outdoes that of her stuffier male forebears. For Lamb, the country is more than just magnificent landscape and proud history. She has a long perspective from which to observe what she sees, having made a trip into Soviet-occupied Afghanistan at the end of the 1980s with a young Hamid Karzai, now the country's dapper president! Her book boasts genuine journalistic exposes as well: she tracks down a Taliban torturer and discovers the Herat literary classes which, masquerading as sewing circles, concealed their activities from the religious police. After receiving a series of heartfelt letters about life in Kabul under the Taliban, she hunts for the young woman who wrote them.' Daily Telegraph 'Award-winning foreign correspondent Christina Lamb has written an inspiring and moving account of Afghanistan's plight! Lamb shows that, despite attempts to crush the country and its culture, its soul remains uncrushed.' Independent on Sunday 'Deeply penetrating, informative and always engaging! Through the dispiriting events under which Afghanistan continues to be submerged, Lamb continually finds delightful people who have latched on to the fact that Faith is an ecclesiastical word for credulity, and offer some hope for the country's future.' FT

'Marvellous' Independent 'Amazing story of high hopes, lost love and ruined lives' Sunday Times

Author Information

Christina Lamb is diplomatic correspondent of The Sunday Telegraph. Named Young Journalist of the Year in the British Press Awards for her original despatches from Afghanistan, she was recently awarded Foreign Affairs Writer of the Year by the Foreign Press Association. She is also the author of the best-selling The Africa House and Waiting for Allah.

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