An Inordinate Fondness Of Beatles: Campfire Conversations With Alfred Russell Wallace On People And Nature Based On Common Travel In The Malay Archipelago

In the book Sochaczewski , who has lived and worked in Southeast Asia for more than 40 years, follows Wallace’s eight years of exploration in Southeast Asia, based on Wallace’s classic book The Malay Archipelago.

In An Inordinate Fondness for Beetles Sochaczewski has created an innovative form of storytelling, combining incisive biography and personal travelogue — Dato Sri Gathorne, Earl of Cranbrook, author of Mammals of Southeast Asia  says the book offers “The rhythm and magic of a verbal fugue between two minds, moulded by contrasting background and upbringing; neither man eschews controversy. Read, laugh and, in the light of impacts during the past century and a half, ponder on the uncertain future of the people and wildlife in this gloriously biodiverse archipelago.”

Sochaczewski examines important themes about which Wallace (and he) care about deeply — our relationship with other species, humanity’s need to control nature and how this leads to nature destruction, white-brown and brown-brown colonialism, serendipity, passion, mysticism — and interprets these ideas with layers of humor, history, social commentary, and sometimes outrageous personal tales.  This is “A new category of non-fiction — part personal travelogue, part incisive biography of Wallace, part unexpected traveller’s tales which coalesce into an illuminating, sometimes bizarre and always-entertaining volume,” according to Jeffrey Sayer, professor of Conservation and Development, James Cook University, founding director general Centre for International Forestry Research-Bogor.

Publisher: Editions Didier Millet

Paperback

2012

ISBN: 9789814385206