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In the late 1940s Patrick Leigh Fermor, now widely regarded as one of the twentieth century's greatest travel writers, set out to explore the then relatively little-visited islands of the Caribbean. Rather than a comprehensive political or historical study of the region, The Traveller's Tree, Leigh Fermor's first book, gives us his own vivid, idiosyncratic impressions of Guadeloupe, Martinique, Dominica, Barbados, Trinidad, and Haiti, among other islands. Here we watch Leigh Fermor walk the dusty roads of the countryside and the broad avenues of former colonial capitals, equally at home among the peasant and the elite, the laborer and the artist. He listens to steel drum bands, delights in the Congo dancing that closes out Havana's Carnival, and observes vodou and Rastafarian rites, all with the generous curiosity and easy erudition that readers will recognize from his subsequent classic accounts A Time of Gifts and Between the Woods and the Water.… (more)
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Fermor and friends traveled to Guadeloupe, Martinique, Dominica, Barbados, Trinidad, Grenada, St Lucia, Antigua, St Kitts, St Eustatius, Saba, St Martin, St Thomas, Haiti and Jamaica. He covers the history, esp political and colonial, of most of the islands. He discusses the racial mix of the population on each island and how the races interact with each other (or not). Some of the islands are discussed in depth -- Haiti has 3 chapters!! - and some are just touched on. I could have done without the cockfighting and voodoo sacrifice section of the Haiti chapters, but, then those chapters wouldn't have been so comprehensive. I enjoyed the chapter on Trinidad and why it happens to have such a large Hindu population.
Fermor notices signs of what he calls the Coca-Cola plague throughout the islands, remarking: The propaganda drive of this firm has been so intensive and so ruthlessly efficient in it's execution, that never for a second are the words Coca-Cola out of one's sight. It is on a scale that nobody who has not crossed the Atlantic can hope to grasp. They are printed on almost everything you touch. Everywhere the beaming heroines of these great advertisements smirk and simper and leer. It becomes the air you breathe, a way of life, an entire civilization - the Coca-Cola age, yokefellow of the age of the Atomic Bomb.
This is not considered one of Fermor's best books. It was well written but somewhat disorganized. I hope to enjoy his other works more than I did this book.