A wonderful personal journey through the tropics from the Observer's former chief travel correspondent.

Part memoir, part travelogue, Tales From the Torrid Zone: Travels in the Deep Tropics is rooted in Alex Frater's birthplace, the tiny tropical republic of Vanuatu. From this obscure South Seas group, he ranges over the hot, wet, beautiful swathe of the world that has haunted him ever since. Along the way, Frater dines with a tropical queen in a leper colony, crosses tropical Africa (and two civil wars) in a forty-four-year-old flying boat, and visits scores of countries, learning about their remarkable history, politics, medicine, flora and fauna.