Hunting pirate heaven: In search of the lost pirate utopias of the Indian Ocean - Hardcover

Kevin Rushby

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0094800103 ISBN 13: 9780094800106

Publisher: Constable & Company LTD, 2001

Synopsis

Kevin Rushby's objective is to locate the descendants of the 16th century pirates who had carved kingdoms for themselves in the remote jungles of north-east Madagascar. Hitching rides on a motley assortment of freighters, dhows, yachts and fishing smacks, he sails up the African coast, then east towards his goal. It is a story full of incident: voyages to islands where forgotten Portugese forts lie covered in jungle, places where some have tried to shoot their way to paradise, and where the ever-present ocean can destroy lives and dreams as quickly as men and women create them.

About this title

About the Author

Kevin Rushby has lived and worked in Sudan, Malaysia, Thailand and Yemen. He is a full-time writer and author of four previous books: Chasing the Mountain of Light, Eating the Flowers of Paradise, Children of Kali and Hunting Pirate Heaven.

From Publishers Weekly

As difficult as it is to make a good pirate movie, it's almost as hard to write a good nonfiction book about pirates. Rushby (Children of Kali; Eating the Flowers of Paradise; etc.) has overcome the obstacle most writers on the subject come up against (i.e., the impossible task of separating a few hard grains of truth from the clouds of fantasy and wish-fulfillment that have always surrounded the subject) by simply venturing to the places pirates used to call home and looking around. A rough-and-tumble adventurer who's more than willing to poke fun at his na‹vet‚ and inexperience (despite the long list of adventure travel books to his credit), Rushby journeys to the islands around East Africa and Madagascar in search of the old pirate redoubts once hidden there. He follows pirate legends via a mix-and-match collection of hitched rides and lucky encounters, reveling in the loopy nature of the area's Arab, Indian, French and African cultural cross-pollination. Rushby is affable even in the worst circumstances, which serves him well when he's going clubbing in a dangerous part of Mozambique with a former gunrunner, almost getting marooned by a vengeful Scandinavian or losing his passport on the war-torn isle of Anjouan. The journey is more interesting than the destination, as Rushby doesn't find many pirate remains at all: rumors, some ruins and lots of stories. However, Rushby does present an enthralling guide to a little-visited corner of the world, haunted by the ghosts of its pirate past.
Copyright 2003 Reed Business Information, Inc.

About this edition

• Publisher: Constable & Company LTD
• Publication date: 2001
• ISBN 10: 0094800103
• ISBN 13: 9780094800106
• Binding: Hardcover
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 300