Travels through Newfoundland and Labrador

Theatre Of Fish

An extraordinary journey across the magnificent, bizarre coast of Newfoundland and Labrador.

'Terrific stuff... Hugely entertaining... As a descriptive writer, a master of the telling observation and the well-chosen epithet, [Gimlette] is in the highest class.'

'An exhilarating [book], lit up by the vividness of the reporting, the sense of history it conveys, and the irresistible verve of Gimlette's prose. It told me a great deal I did not know and am glad to know, and entertained me greatly'

'John Gimlette is a writer of vivid comical prose... Mingles ancestral history and humorous anecdote... Highly entertaining'

'A sprawling travelogue of fascinating anecdotes, flashes of brilliant wit'

'With his quiet respectability shining throughout, Gimlette's tale is not just a travel yarn or a family history, it tells a story in its own right too'

'The arrival of a new book by John Gimlette, barrister and author of the critically acclaimed At the Tomb of the Inflatable Pig, is a cause for celebration. Few modern writers knit such meticulous prose, boast such a keen eye for detail, or possess such mordant wit ... Theatre of Fish is a superbly apt title for the results. As a kind of outpost on the edge of the Americas, Newfoundland's people seem to have an almost Dickensian quirkiness, perfect for Gimlette's approach. Yet perhaps most admirably, the book holds them up to the light without a hint of ridicule. As in Paraguay, the author appears genuinely drawn to its cast of lost souls, eccentrics and the bizarre. Similarly, much of the history he recounts is darkly unpleasant, and yet he manages to recount it without either losing his sense of humour or perspective. Intellectually, Theatre of Fish is a delight.'

John Gimlette is a well-established travel writer, having won the Shiva Naipaul Memorial Prize and the Wanderlust Travel Writing Award. He writes regularly for a number of broadsheets. His first book, At the Tomb of the Inflatable Pig: Travels through Paraguay, was published in 2003 to massive critical acclaim. When not probing the extreme corners of the Earth he practises as a barrister in London.

John Gimlette's travels through this harsh and awesome landscape, the eastern extreme of the Americas, broadly mirrors that of Dr Eliot Curwen, his great-grandfather, who spent a summer there as a doctor in 1893, and who was witness to some of the most beautiful ice and cruelest poverty in the British Empire. Using Curwen's extraordinarily frank journal, John Gimlette revisits the places his great-grandfather encountered and along the way explores his own links with this brutal land.

Travels through Paraguay

At the Tomb of the Inflatable Pig

In this uniquely written travel book, Daily Telegraph writer John Gimlette takes the reader on a rollercoaster journey through the tumultuous past, and extraordinarily colourful present, of Paraguay.

[Gimlette's] account is so rich in anecdotes, so suffused in color and dialect that we are left with a sense of having somehow inhaled all this Paraguayan history and then experienced it through a nightmare or a dream. Gimlette has given us a cast of characters as vivid as any by Dickens or Waugh

Full of surprises, this is a riveting read

Off the wall title, and a great off centre enjoyment, with a smashing, entertaining piece of writing...

John Gimlette's extraordinary book, part history, part travelogue, is so vivid that nobody reading it is ever likely to forget the country. - Max Davidson

Colorful and meandering, by turns hilarious and horrifying, often delightful. . .and very, very odd. . . . An entirely faithful reflection of its subject

Gimlette knows his subject cold, and it's a subject bound to have something for everyone . . . Charming and vivid. . . crammed full of a wild cast of characters and incredible experiences

A hilarious, informed anti-travelogue . . . with generous detail grounded in the author's personal experiences, this is a travel book of the mind

Although this is his first book, John Gimlette is already well established as a travel journalist, having won the Shiva Naipaul Memorial Prize for an essay which has led to this book, and the Wanderlust Travel Writing Award. He writes regularly for the Telegraph. When not deep in the jungles of Paraguay he practises as a barrister in London. He is currently writing his second book, Theatre of Fish: Travels through Newfoundland and Labrador.

Paraguay - the name conjures up everything most exotic and extreme in South America. It's a place of hellish jungles, dictators, fraudsters and Nazis, utopian experiments, missionaries and lurid coups. It's not a place for the timid tourist. It doesn't even have its own guidebook. But Paraguay, as revealed in this outstanding new travel book, is among the most beautiful and captivating countries in the world. The beguiling Paraguayans, despised and feared by their neighbours, are unfathomable.  They adore Diana, Princess of Wales, as if she were still alive and hundreds volunteered to fight for Britain in the Falklands War. Their politics are Byzantine but when the Vice-President is murdered, they call in Scotland Yard. Discover more about the unique traditions of South American culture through this fascinating piece of travel journalism.

John Gimlette

A very special piece of travel writing. To journey past familiar European landmarks with someone who knew them in the post-war chaos of the 1940s is both moving and illuminating

Gimlette has a gift for travel writing with details of the most intimate kind, the small change and ammunition of a soldier's life... A subtle book, with telling testimony from the survivors of what it was actually like to fight a war with few rules

An important book, reminding us of the links between old and new world, ideals and ideologies, war and peace in our phoenix-like continent. It is at once raw and erudite, deeply moving and strangely leisurely. It's also rich in black humour and insight

An original travel book, written in vigorous prose and exhaustively researched... it has at its heart a profound understanding of the "soup" - the chaos and madness - of war

As a born traveller and writer, he takes an epicurean pleasure in place and language

One of the quirkiest, most thoughtful and illuminating books to have come my way in a long time... Gimlette ranges far beyond his original remit into adventurous realms all his own

A book that works on many levels - historical guide, social history, moving reunion of people and place - and does each superbly

Travelling back through the final stages of the war... Gimlette discovers what happened to the battlefields, to the people who smashed their way across the continent, and to those who lived in the carnage... Gimlette is an assured enough writer to reveal a very different contemporary Europe, constructed on the smouldering ruins of its predecessor

A European Journey in War and Peace

By the end of World War II much of Western Europe was in chaos. The future of our world had been contested here, in the hinterlands of France and across the German plains. But what's become of the battlefields now? Or the people that lived on them? And is there any trace of the 2.7 million Americans who smashed their way into the Reich (or the 12 million that followed)? With questions like these, the award-winning travel writer John Gimlette, guided by WWII veteran Putnam Flint, sets off on an astonishing journey into the past.

John Gimlette

Praise for Panther Soup

A very special piece of travel writing. To journey past familiar European landmarks with someone who knew them in the post-war chaos of the 1940s is both moving and illuminating

Gimlette has a gift for travel writing with details of the most intimate kind, the small change and ammunition of a soldier's life... A subtle book, with telling testimony from the survivors of what it was actually ...

An important book, reminding us of the links between old and new world, ideals and ideologies, war and peace in our phoenix-like continent. It is at once raw and erudite, deeply moving and strangely leisurely. It's ...

A very special piece of travel writing. To journey past familiar European landmarks with someone who knew them in the post-war chaos of the 1940s is both moving and illuminating

Gimlette has a gift for travel writing with details of the most intimate kind, the small change and ammunition of a soldier's life... A subtle book, with telling testimony from the survivors of what it was actually ...

An important book, reminding us of the links between old and new world, ideals and ideologies, war and peace in our phoenix-like continent. It is at once raw and erudite, deeply moving and strangely leisurely. It's ...

A very special piece of travel writing. To journey past familiar European landmarks with someone who knew them in the post-war chaos of the 1940s is both moving and illuminating

Gimlette has a gift for travel writing with details of the most intimate kind, the small change and ammunition of a soldier's life... A subtle book, with telling testimony from the survivors of what it was actually ...

An important book, reminding us of the links between old and new world, ideals and ideologies, war and peace in our phoenix-like continent. It is at once raw and erudite, deeply moving and strangely leisurely. It's ...

Books by John Gimlette

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