Pathless Forest

A gripping, Technicolor account * Guardian * Over the years, Rafflesia has bewitched botanists – its very elusiveness adding to its mystique. For Thorogood, who already specialised in parasitic plants, it became the apex of them all. He was Captain Ahab; this was his own great white -- Tom Whipple * The Times * Rafflesia [is] one of the strangest and most gruesome plants on the planet … In his flamboyant account, Thorogood has produced a book as highly coloured as the plant itself -- Kate Teltscher * Spectator * A love letter to the largest flowers in the world: the monstrous blooms of Rafflesia … a relationship that echoes the monomania of any Werner Herzog antihero … like its subject, his prose is undemure, supersized, unbound by convention -- Rachel Aspden * Guardian * A vivid account of this gruelling expedition, combined with his fierce determination to find the pungent plants that have obsessed him for decades * Daily Mail * Thorogood’s dazzling descriptions light up the faraway forests with an impassioned commitment -- Sophy Roberts * TLS * Chris Thorogood is a self-described ‘plant junkie’. The plant on which he is hooked is a bizarre one called Rafflesia, a parasitic monster found growing only in the Philippines and Indonesia and notable for its enormous, fleshy blossom. Pathless Forests is a sort of travelogue describing Thorogood’s journey around this part of the world in search of the beasts in bloom … has all the hallmarks of adventure: nearly drowning in a river, scaling cliffs while dangling on lainas, being bitten by giant ants and stung by toxic trees … But it was worth it … and he also makes a serious broader point. Rafflesia … are threatened and on the edge of extinction. For all their strangeness, the very rarity of these gigantic living objects symbolises our continuing carelessness towards nature -- Charles Elliott * Literary Review *