Eric Hansen - Orchid Fever: A Horticultural Tale of Love, Lust, and Lunacy

Acclaim for Eric Hansens

ORCHID FEVER

An extraordinary and well-told tale of botany, obsession and plant politics.Hansens vivid descriptions of the complex techniques some orchids use to pollinate themselves will raise your eyebrows at natures sexual ingenuity.

USA Today

A treat to read.Hansens sexy flower descriptions, his quick sketches of orchid rogues and visionaries, and his ready sense of humormake Orchid Fever a riotous, blossomy tonic for the brain.

The Seattle Times

At once funny and troubling.Orchid Fever is a book about obsession and officialdom, the meeting of impassioned collectors and intransigent bureaucrats.

The Sunday Telegraph (London)

Like some sci-fi pathologist hot on the trail of a sinister mind-altering microbe, the intrepid Eric Hansen sends back dispatches from Orchid World, a parallel universe where everyone has inexplicably gone ape over orchids. Hansen plays the visitor to [this] small planet with finesse, keeping his journalistic cool while everyone around him succumbs to the madness.Wry and unfailingly entertaining.

The Boston Globe

A delicious literary adventure and horticultural expose.

The Miami Herald

The orchid world is a fertile place for a writer like Eric Hansen, who guides his pointed sense of humor like a heat-seeking missile toward hypocrisy and bureaucratic corruption.

Express Books

This captivating tale is not so much about flowers as it is about obsession. In various chapters, Hansen examines different facets of the mysterious world of orchids, a universe of incredible subterfuge, erotic plant names and some very eccentric characters.Fully enjoyable.

Publishers Weekly

Hilarious and hugely enjoyable.Hansen takes the reader on a five-year journey of the lunatic fringe of the orchid world where a rather large number of orchid people have gone barking mad.

Daily Mail (London)

Revealing and lucidly written.Orchid Fever provides a window on a world that is rarely seen.

Barrons

Hansen is an amused observer of the unexpectedly perverse world of orchid collecting. From page one he has us laughing at the absurdities of a group of people taking themselves a little too seriously.

Book Sense

Orchid Fever is a comic eco-thriller filled with plant politics and Alice in Wonderland paradoxes.

Literary Review (London)

An intelligent and captivating book. Hansen has a poets eye for curiosa and eccentric juxtaposition, and his descriptions of these lascivious flowers is unimprovable.

Evening Standard

Erudite and affectionatea comic masterpiece.

Image Magazine (London)

Hansens story is hilarious and bizarre, filled with extravagantly colorful flowers and the even more obsessive people who are involved with them.

The Sacramento Bee

A tale that cross-pollinates Darwin and Conrad. A vivid and compelling investigation of how simple flowers can lure strong minds to madness.

Joe Kane, author of Savages and Running the Amazon

Funny and surprisingly controversial.

Gardens (UK)

In my forty years as an orchid scientist, author and book editor, I have never read anything quite like Orchid Fever. It is part absurdist black humor and part horticultural expose. Frightening, funny and full of tantalizing insider knowledge. And yesthere are strange and wonderful stories about orchids as well.

Dr. Joseph Arditti, editor of Orchid Biology

Riveting.The exotic, it turns out, is among us.

The Columbus Dispatch

Told with great style and sardonic wit. This is a story about greed, tragicomic bureaucracy and a most peculiar obsession that I still find hard to believe.

Marc Reisner, author of Cadillac Desert

A skillful blend of anecdote, statistic, character sketch and conjectureall of which Hansen does remarkably well. OrchidFever is a cracking read and a testament to the twisted relationship between man and nature.

The Scotsman

[Orchid Fever] is storytelling at its best.

Fort Lauderdale Sun-Sentinel

We trundle along in our workaday world, content with the status quo, until an event shakes us from complacencya shining light is cast upon the scene that shows our life in a new way. Eric Hansens new book, Orchid Fever, has done just that. It is fascinating, bizarre, humorous, kind, insightful, controversial, and ultimately, true to the facts.Hansen managed to turn up just about the most interesting possible cast of real-life characters to tell the tale of orchid fever. Fabulous and brilliantly portrayed.

Ned Nash, Director of Conservation, American Orchid Society

A fast-paced travel adventure laced with colorful characters.[It] will change forever the way you look at the seductive orchid and those who have been seduced by it.

Marin Independent Journal

An exuberant romp through the surprisingly bizarre world of orchid collectors, where decorous matrons swoon over blooms, bureaucrats act like SWAT teams, and reputable scientists punch customs officers in the face. A deliciously engaging tale of flower power.

Kirkus Reviews

A scandalous, amusing, and thoroughly entertaining read.

Islands

Eric Hansen

ORCHID FEVER

Eric Hansen now lives in San Francisco, but over the last twenty-five years he has traveled throughout Europe, the Middle East, Australia, Nepal, and Southeast Asia. His articles and reviews have appeared in The New York Times, Travel and Leisure, Cond Nast Traveler, Outside Magazine, Mens Journal, Natural History Magazine, GEO, and Amica. He is also the author of two highly acclaimed books: Stranger in the Forest and Motoring with Mohammed. He can be reached at .

ALSO BY E RIC H ANSEN ,

AVAILABLE FROM VINTAGE BOOKS

Motoring with Mohammed:

Journeys to Yemen and the Red Sea

Stranger in the Forest: On Foot Across Borneo

F IRST V INTAGE D EPARTURES E DITION , F EBRUARY 2001

Copyright 2000 by Eric Hansen

All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. Published in the United States by Vintage Books, a division of Random House, Inc., New York, and simultaneously in Canada by Random House of Canada Limited, Toronto. Originally published in hardcover in the United States by Pantheon Books, a division of Random House, Inc., New York, in 2000.