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Loading... Cocaine Train: Tracing My Bloodline Through Colombiaby Stephen Smith
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Sign up for LibraryThing to find out whether you'll like this book. No current Talk conversations about this book. Despite the title, this non-fiction travel book is less about drugs and more about the search for family and history in Columbia. As an adult, the author discovers that the grandfather he hardly knew had a mistress and son in Columbia, where he had worked on the railway. He goes to Columbia to look for the half-uncle he has never met (and doesn't even know the name of) and to find out more about the double-life of his grandfather. Along the way, he finds out more about this difficult country, where there is a constant threat of violence, partly from kidnappers, and drug barons, but also from political unrest. It is an interesting journey, with lots of information about the country, and although it was a very personal journey, the author had an unobstrusive style in telling us about the history. I particularly enjoyed the chapter about watching the World Cup there, and the end of his quest to find his other family. no reviews | add a review
One of the most violent countries on earth, where the cause of death is regularly 'massacre', drink drivers play chicken and kidnap stories pass for dinner party conversation; nine times more dangerous than the United States, Columbia is no place for the nervous traveller. So it is much against his better judgement that, in the summer of 1998, coinciding with a World Cup and a general election, journalist Stephen Smith finds himself boarding the Cocaine Train out of Cali, home of Columbia's infamous drugs cartel. Its passengers prey to theives, extortionists and a dozen different varieties of paramilitary, the Cocaine Train is one of the last remnants of a once great railway system, and Smith is riding in it in search of a grandfather he barely knew: Fred Leslie Frost, pioneering railwayman, upright citizen and diplomat, with a Columbian mistress and an illegitimate son. As remote from his suburban British origins as it is possible to imagine. No library descriptions found. |
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Google Books — Loading... GenresMelvil Decimal System (DDC)918.6104635History and Geography Geography and Travel Geography of and travel in South America Panama and Colombia and Ecuador ColombiaLC ClassificationRatingAverage:
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Great observations of life in Colombia with a nice dry British observation. ( )