Review
'Mexico has not been portrayed more vividly since Graham Green! not merely an impressive travel book, this one is enchanting too.' Telegraph 'a wonderful writer! an adventure hard to beat in terms of sheer exotic allure' Guardian
Book Description
Katie Hickman went to Mexico looking for magic. She found it in the circus – big top, clowns, elephant and all – where cheap, torn materials are transformed for a night into glittering illusion. Gradually adjusting to the harsh ways of the circus’s nomadic lifestyle she soon became absorbed into this hypnotic new world. At first, as a foreigner, she was on the outskirts, but she soon became ‘La Gringa Estrella’, a performer in her own right and adopted sister to the Bell’s family. With all the power and richness of a novelist, Katie Hickman describes her epic year-long journey through this extraordinary and bizarrely beautiful country. Riding elephants and playing clowns as part of the show, she uses the lessons of the circus as a focus to look deep into the complex psyche of modern Mexixo, and into the very nature of ‘magic’ itself.
About the Author
Katie Hickman was born into a diplomatic family in 1960 and has spent more than twenty-five years living abroad in Europe, the Far East and Latin America. She is the author of three previous books: ‘A Trip to the Light Fantastic – Travels with a Mexican Circus, ‘ which was one of the ‘Independent’s ‘1993 Books of the Year and was shortlisted for the 1994 Thomas Cook Travel Book Award; ‘The Quetzal Summer’, a novel set in the Andes, for which she was short-listed for the 1993 ‘Sunday TImes ‘ Young British Writer of the Year Award, and ‘Dreams of the Peaceful Dragon – A Journey Into Bhutan’. She is featured in the Oxford University Press guide to women travellers, ‘Wayward Women’.
