Interview with ‘Tropophiliac’ Alexander Frater

Alexander Frater, author of Tales From the Torrid Zone: Travels in the Deep Tropics and self-proclaimed tropophiliac—“a lover of warm, wet countries”—sat for an interview this week on the public radio show On Point. The Washington Times and The New York Times have raved about “Tales.” In the latter, William Grimes calls Frater a “genial tour guide and a stylish writer” who “makes excellent company.”

From Grimes’s review:

In a bar on the island of Paama, he looks up long enough from his book to take in a terrific fight around the pool table, which he recounts economically.

“A huge woman grasped a billiard cue in a two-handed axman’s grip, and, as if splitting a log, brought it down on the bald head of an old, wrinkled man,” he writes. “He went ‘Ungh!’ and slumped to his knees. Both sexes began trading blows, the females punching harder and meaner and lower. Soon the males began limping back to the table where the women, impassive, joined them; quietly they resumed their game.”

Frater has had a life-long fascination with the “Torrid Zone.” He’s the son of missionary parents, born in Vanuatu.

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