As viagens do André e a Costa do Mosquito

Enquanto o André B. anda pelos planaltos da Guatemala, eu viajo mais ao lado, Honduras, a Costa do Mosquito. Até onde a self-estime (a raiar a insanidade) e a obstinação nos podem levar.

Allie Fox is sick of the fast foods, television, crime, bad workmanship, and cheap imports. He is interested in the lifestyle of the Central American migrant workers who work for his boss and thus he decides that the answer is to start a new life in the jungles of Honduras. Fox moves his wife and four children from Hatfield, Massachusetts to a remote overgrown clearing on the Mosquito Coast, which he believes is untainted by the modern world.
The story is told from the view point of his son Charlie, who admires his father for "not settling for any average Crusoe sort of living." Father builds a solid house (by going down to the beach to collect what is washed in from the world), has running water, toilet and laundry. Once this monumental task is complete, he decides to give a gift to the natives - ice. So he builds a monstrous machine out of old pipes to turn "fire into ice." Naturally, Allie Fox's actions are full of contradictions. Never mind his premise that this is a untainted region of the world. He soon finds that the natives know about ice and worse - Christianity. What works so well in this story is that it is told through the eyes of Charlie. Children naturally believe in their parents, but at the same time they have their own inner sense.




The Mosquite Coast, Paul Theroux