GREEN, Toby 1974-

PERSONAL: Born 1974; married; children: one daughter. Education: University of Cambridge, degree in philosophy, 1996; University of Birmingham, Ph.D. candidate (West African history), beginning 2002.

ADDRESSES: Agent—c/o Author Mail, Weidenfeld & Nicolson, Onion House, 5 Upper St. Martin's Ln., London WC2H 9EA, England.

CAREER: Historian and travel writer. Formerly worked as a literary agent.

AWARDS, HONORS: Nominated for Thomas Cook Travel Book of the Year award and Guardian First Book Award, both 1999, both for Saddled with Darwin; K. Blundell Trust Award, British Society of Authors.

WRITINGS:

Saddled with Darwin: A Journey through SouthAmerica, Weidenfeld & Nicolson (London, England), 1999.

Meeting the Invisible Man: Secrets and Magic in WestAfrica, Weidenfeld & Nicolson (London, England), 2001.

Thomas Moore's Magician: A Novel Account of Utopia in Mexico, Weidenfeld & Nicolson (London, England), 2004.

Contributor of book reviews to periodicals.

Author's works have been translated into six languages.

SIDELIGHTS: Toby Green began his career as a literary agent and the author of travel books, although his third book, Thomas Moore's Magician: A Novel Account of Utopia in Mexico, presents a departuer, being a hybrid of biography, philosophy, and satire. In Green's first book, Saddled with Darwin: A Journey through South America, he retraces the route Charles Darwin took in South America as part of his voyage on the Beagle in 1831. That trip provided much of the information for Darwin's seminal work On the Originof the Species. Although Green could have used modern travel methods such as a bus, he decided to make the trip by horseback, despite the fact that he had never ridden a horse before. Writing in the Times Literary Supplement, Nicola Walker pointed out that this decision "adds, of course, to the picaresque undertaking as well as testifying to his utter foolhardiness, courage and luck."

Green, who also traveled on foot at times, retraces Darwin's route as best he can. Nevertheless, some sections of the original route are no longer accessible, such as a road Darwin traveled through Chile's Rio Tingiririca, which now lies under a man-made lake. As expected, Green encounters many other changes in South America, including a tremendous amount of urban growth and its associated effects on the environment, animals, and indigenous peoples and cultures. Green does, however, encounter the famous South American cowboys, called gauchos, who have survived the changes in South America and help house and feed Green for parts of his journey.

Writing in Nature, Andrew Barry questioned Green's decision to follow Darwin's route and noted that he does "himself a disservice in harnessing himself to Darwin—perhaps an unfair one. Darwin's spare, analytical prose contrasts strongly with Green's, which is marked by overblown descriptive passages." Nevertheless, Barry noted, "Green's account of the people he met on the way is a delight." Although Walker also did not like Green's "propensity for purple prose," the reviewer noted that the author places much of his story "within a well-informed historical context." Walker also commented, "If Toby Green should take up the reins again, his story will be worth watching out for."

In Meeting the Invisible Man: Secrets and Magic in West Africa, Green once again takes an improbable journey, this time to track down West African mystics who supposedly know the secrets of invisibility and invulnerability. Green travels to Guinea-Bissau and meets up with his friend, Senegalese photographer El Hadji, who told Green during his previous trip to the area in 1995 about people with magical powers. With Hadji as his guide, Green journeys to out-of-the-way settlements in the African bush country as he tries to satisfy his aroused curiosity about the "marabouts," who are considered to be the keepers of ancient knowledge. Throughout the book, Green encounters marabouts and others who, for one reason or another, no longer have magical powers or are unable to demonstrate them to him. Finally, after overcoming a wide range of dangers and setbacks, including smugglers, sickness, and long stretches of boredom, Green meets a marabout just in time to save him from a knife attack. Writing in African Business, reviewer Stephen Williams thought the book "could have used some literary editing, it is simply way too long." Deborah L. Manzolillo was more impressed, commenting in the Times Literary Supplement, "Although Green demythologizes the romance of the trip, his book is hard to put down."

In Thomas Moore's Magician, Green uses the travel genre as a vehicle for a hybrid of biography and utopian narrative. His subject is the Spanish jurist Vasco de Quiroga, who used British theologan Thomas Moore's Utopia as a blueprint for founding a series of communes in Mexico in the sixteenth century, the only time an attempt was madde to to realize a political manifesto prior to the Russian Revolution of 1917. While recreating Quiroga's life and the atmosphere of these utopias, Green questions what chance there is of a similar level of political idealism existing in the twenty-first century.

Green told CA: "My early inspiration was to try and fuse my philosophical studies with the world I found in my travels. In my first two travel books, written during my mid-twenties, I used my journeys as ways of exploring ideas including evolution and the origins of modern forms of racism. Placing my experience of travel in far-flung places in an historical context has inevitable given me an increasing interest in world history, and, whereas in my twenties I was interested in describing how the world was, I now want to write about how the world became the way it is today. This is why I have embarked on a Ph.D. programme linking the history of West Africa and Latin America, in parallel to my literary career."

BIOGRAPHICAL AND CRITICAL SOURCES:

PERIODICALS

African Business, October, 2001, Stephen Williams, review of Meeting the Invisible Man: Secrets and Magic in West Africa, p. 49.

Nature, August 26, 1999, Andrew Berry, review of Saddled with Darwin: A Journey through South America, pp. 831-832.

Times Literary Supplement (London, England), July 30, 1999, Nicola Walker, review of Saddled with Darwin, 32; October 26, 2001, Deborah L. Manzolillo, review of Meeting the Invisible Man.