PRAISE FOR "THE FRUIT HUNTERS"

NATIONAL BESTSELLER
EDITORS’ CHOICE, NEW YORK TIMES
WINNER, McAUSLAN FIRST BOOK AWARD
FINALIST, MAVIS GALLANT PRIZE

“A beautiful and evocative book… Adam Leith Gollner is a crazy good writer. I’ve got the fruit bug.”
— Feist, Singer/Songwriter

The Fruit Hunters is a delectable journey through jungles, street markets, and orchards in search of the world’s most exotic fruits. Gollner’s quest for the forbidden coco-de-mer, his love affair with the chupa-chupa, and his durian-induced intoxication make him as fascinating a narrator as the fruit-hunters, farmers, and scientists he encounters along the way. I loved taking this culinary adventure with Gollner—anyone who brings mangosteens to parties is welcome at my table.
— Amy Stewart, author of Flower Confidential

“We have swooned with delight over Michigan’s late summer Bing cherries, but such moments of roadside pleasure pale in comparison to the passions that drive fruit hunters to discover and nurture exotics never found in supermarkets. Oh, how we would love to suck on a miracle berry of Africa and savor a tiger-striped fig! Adam Leith Gollner’s mesmerizing account of fruits that are rare or commercial, erotic or medicinal, and of the sometimes nutty characters who care about them, provokes righteous indignation over how much we are denied as well as ravenous appetite to taste it.”
— Jane and Michael Stern, authors of Roadfood

“Adam Leith Gollner is the best kind of monomaniac. He’s a writer in love with his subject, an obsessive chasing after obsessives. And what a fruitful Eden this Adam has discovered: the global underworld of rare-fruit aficionados, fruitarians, fruit-smugglers, and fruit detectives. Lyrical and well-informed, exuberant and erudite, and recounted with aptly ripe turns of phrase, The Fruit Hunters is the heartfelt and always fascinating story of the quest for the sweetest prizes the natural world has to offer.”
— Taras Grescoe, author of Bottomfeeder and The Devil’s Picnic.

“Lustrous and Exhilarating… Jawdropping… Adam Leith Gollner possesses a talent as rare and exotic as a coconut pearl… The Fruit Hunters is a paean to the overwhelming diversity of fruits on this planet, both botanical and human….At one point early in the book, the author explains how it’s possible to graft branches of different, say, citrus species onto one plant. A Chilean farmer, he writes, recently made headlines with a tree that bears plums, peaches, cherries, apricots, almonds and nectarines. It’s how I see Gollner: the talents of a food writer, investigative journalist, poet, travel writer and humorist grafted onto one unusual specimen. Long may he thrive.”
—Mary Roach, New York Times Book Review