The RUM DIARY: A Novel

Hailed by The Philadelphia Inquireras "laugh-out-loud funny" and "a great and an unexpected joy," The Rum Diary"reveals a young Hunter S. Thompson brimming with talent." Based on Thompson's own experiences as a reporter in Puerto Rico for The Nation, the National Journal, and the San Juan Starin the late fifties and early sixties, The Rum Diaryis a tangled love story in a Caribbean boomtown. The narrator, Paul Kemp, irresistibly drawn to a sexy, mysterious woman, is thrust into a world where corruption and get-rich-quick schemes rule, and anything (including murder) is permissible. In his signature tongue-in-cheek style, Thompson presents a dazzling, comedic romp, a fictional excursion as riveting and outrageous as his popularFear and Loathingbooks.

About the Author :
Hunter S. Thompson’s books include Fear and Loathing at Rolling Stone, Fear and Loathing in America, Screwjack, Hell’s Angels, Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas, The Proud Highway, Better Than Sex, and Kingdom of Fear. He died in February 2005.

Review :
"A great and an unexpected joy . . . Reveals a young Hunter Thompson brimming with talent." --"The Philadelphia Inquirer" "At the core of this hard-drinking, hard-talking, hard-living man is a moralist, Puritan, even an innocent. "The Rum Diary" gives us this side of him without apology . . . with a kind of pride." --"The Washington Post Book World" "Crackling, twisted, searing, paced to a deft prose rhythm . . . A shot of Gonzo with a rum chaser." --"San Francisco Chronicle" "Enough booze to float a yacht and enough fear and loathing to sink it." --"New York Daily News" "Thompson flashes signs of the vitriol that would later be turned loose on society." --"USA Today" "New York Daily News" Enough booze to float a yacht and enough fear and loathing to sink it. "Salon" A remarkably full and mature first novel...a languid and lovingly executed book that reveals its emotional depths slowly. "San Francisco Chronicle" Crackling, twisted, searing, paced to a deft prose rhythm...a shot of Gonzo with a rum chaser. "The Philadelphia Inquirer" A great and an unexpected joy...reveals a young Hunter Thompson brimming with talent. "The Washington Post Book World" At the core of this hard-drinking, hard-talking, hard-living man is a moralist, Puritan, even an innocent. "The Rum Diary" gives us this side of him without apology...with a kind of pride. "USA Today" Throughout "The Rum Diary, " Thompson flashes signs of the vitriol that would later be turned loose on society. Jimmy Buffett "The Run Diary" shows a side of human nature that is ugly and wrong. But it is a world that Hunter Thompson knows in the nerves of his neck. This is a brilliant tribal study and a bone in the throat of all decent people. William Kennedy Pulitzer Prize-winning author of "Ironweed" The tools Hunter S. Thompson would use in the years ahead-bizarre wit, mockery without end, redundant excess, supreme self-confidence, the narrative of the wounded meritorious ego, and the idiopathic anger of the righteous outlaw -- were all there in his precocious imagination in San Juan. There, too were the beginnings of his future as a masterful prose stylist.