BRITAIN	USA and INTERNATIONAL
‘An exceptional piece of travel writing.’ Matthew Parris, Books of the Year 2003 Sunday Telegraph	‘Graham Greene arrived in Paraguay hoping to find ‘some mingling of the exotic, the dangerous and the Victorian’.  He was not disappointed.  Gimlette has captured that mingling as powerfully as Greene did.’ Ben MacIntyre, The New York Times
‘[Gimlette] was immediately attracted to this mysterious country, and tells its remarkable story brilliantly … Full of surprises, this is a riveting read.’ Max Davidson, Sunday Telegraph	‘[Gimlette] writes with enormous wit, indignation and a heightened sense of the absurd, qualities that make him a particularly keen observer in this antique, often unlucky land … His 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.’ Michiko Kakutani, The New York Times
‘An extraordinary book, part history, part travelogue …so vivid that nobody reading it is ever likely to forget the country … a book that sheds fascinating light on a forgotten corner of Latin America’ Daily Telegraph
‘A truly wonderful exploration of one of the world’s most captivating countries … Brilliant’ Sunday Express	‘Gimlette knows his subject cold, and it’s a subject bound to have something for everyone …An accessible read, crammed full of a wild cast of characters and incredible experiences.’ San Francisco Chronicle
‘John Gimlette … has written a glorious travel book, his first, in which the country’s craziness is portrayed with humour, insight and considerable deftness of touch … As a historian of the absurd he is superlative’ Edward Marriot, Sunday Times	‘A hilarious, informed anti-travelogue… with generous detail grounded in the author’s personal experiences, this is a travel book of the mind.’ The Boston Globe
‘Perceptive and entertaining’ Times Literary Supplement	‘A wonderful, wacky book …It is filled with the offbeat and the bizarre.  Gimlette’s narrative attempts to flesh out a country that is as difficult to define as nailing Jell-O to a wall.  Vivid, riotous, fascinating and never dull, his book is wildly entertaining..’ Tucson Citizen
Gimlette has a winning style’ The Spectator.
‘Alternating succinct historical background with tales of contemporary life, peopled by a cast of lost souls, his story is a highly entertaining one …’ Phil Baker, Sunday Times	‘A wildly entertaining read: a raucous blend of history, travelogue, and a guide to one of the last untouristed spots on earth.’ Condé  Nast Traveler (USA)
‘This is a cracking read’ Wanderlust	‘For me, there was no resisting Gimlette’s rollicking account’ The San Diego Union-Tribune
‘Paraguayan enthusiasts and others more generally interested in Latin America will find much to their taste in Gimlette’s book.  He has a firm grasp of the country’s intriguing past, and a watchful eye on its perplexing present’ The Literary Review.	‘For sheer bravado, the prize goes to John Gimlette …His first book, At the Tomb of the Inflatable Pig … should be ranked among the best explorations of its kind: at once a history and a guide to one of the least hospitable nations on earth.’ The Washington Times
‘**** Blackly comical’ The Mail on Sunday	‘A Superior travel book’ Foreign Affairs (pub. Council on Foreign Relations)(USA)
‘John Gimlette’s luminous prose, quirky humour and savvy knowledge of Paraguay’s past and present make this a travel book of the very highest order … An observer like this is an even rarer bird that those he describes.  Gimlette marries a lawyer’s unruffled gaze with the ardent pen of a poet.’ Wexas ‘Traveller’ Magazine	‘What keeps you reading about Paraguay, maybe in spite of yourself, is Gimlette’s marvellous wit and eye for character … you spot some delicious looking conversation … you pause over a description … and bang, you’re a goner, like Alice down the rabbit hole.’ Pittsburgh Post-Gazette (USA)
‘Wonder and outrage fuel this fizzing traveller’s tale, often wittily frivolous but often, too, much bothered by political crimes and the legacies of old evils.’ The Times	‘A spirited travelogue … a richly detailed catalog of oddities and horrors, the kind of eccentricities that flourish in isolation.’ Outside (USA)
‘A rollicking read … Gimlette is an articulate  writer and his turn of phrase jumps off the page.  It helps that he has the reader hooked from the very first paragraph … part of Gimlette’s talent is his ability to portray complicated events and horrific people and the unpleasant things they’ve done in a darkly comic manner without ever sounding glib … a captivating book.’ Geographical (UK)	‘An improbably titled but supremely lucid journey … Gimlette moves back and forth in time, weaving modernity and history, observation and reflection into a mesmerising fabric.’ The New Zealand Herald
‘Off-the-wall title, and great off-centre entertainment with a smashing, entertaining piece of writing from Cheshire’s John Gimlette.’ Manchester Evening News	‘A tome that blends travelogue, history and flights of descriptive whimsy to highly tonic effect … You couldn’t ask for a more entertaining guide.’ The Seattle Times
‘I was immediately intrigued.  I bought it and couldn’t put it down … Just as Bill Bryson changed the ‘over here’ travelogue, this one has given a new lease of life to historical background travelogues’ John Burton, World Land Trust	‘Paraguay, the ‘island surrounded by land’ is one of the strangest, most fascinating, least understood countries in the world.  English attorney, John Gimlette, a frequent visitor … does it justice.’ The Oregonian (USA)
‘A fascinating mixture of travelogue and history.  Keeping an urbanely witty prose style throughout, he undercuts his various journeys around Paraguay with an in-depth and well-researched look at the history of this eclectic and peculiar nation.’ The Good Book Guide	‘A wonderfully bizarre evocation of Paraguay …The writing is at turns dryly humourous, moving and shocking.  How could it be that the world doesn’t know about this place? … The reader is left wanting more … surely this is the measure of good travel writing: despite the awful conditions and incomprehensible destination, this place is now the only place the reader wants to go.’.’ The Otago Times (NZ)
‘One of our favourite travel books of 2003 … a hilarious travelogue, history and unorthodox travel guide.’ Food & Travel	‘Exuberant travelogue.’ The Sunday Tribune (Dublin)
‘Gimlette’s stiff upper lip is a marvellous foil to the adventures, and he writes with uncommon panache.’ Hampstead & Highgate Express	‘A fantastically written book’ The Library Journal (USA)
‘A vivid evocation of a nation so eccentric that it calls in Scotland Yard when the vice-president is murdered. ****’ Ink	‘[Gimlette] never fails to impress with his ingenuity, sincerity and sense of humor’ Publishers Weekly (USA)
‘A marvellously rumbustious, enjoyable and evocative debut’ Publishing News (UK)	‘Fascinating and compulsively readable’ Booklist (USA)
‘Gimlette records it all with verve, precision and a rollicking sense of timing.  He has presented us with a page turner of a travel book that mixes culture and criminality, decadence and despair with a bizarre flair that must approximate the country itself’ Amazon.co.uk review.	‘John Gimlette has done the world a great service with his new book … It’s terrifically funny … A great book in the noble tradition of British travel writing.’ Hartford Advocate, CT
A serious yet highly readable volume … Gimlette has done his homework and has distilled a rip-roaring tome.’ www.geocities.com	‘I haven’t enjoyed a book from the “travel” genre so much since Bruce Chatwin’s landmark In Patagonia. Nzoom.com review.
‘Hugely addictive … Gimlette’s talents are wickedly formidable.’ Wag magazine	‘Splendidly rendered’ National Geographical’s ‘Five Faves’

 
 
October 2004