Magic Island (Armchair Traveller) [Paperback]

W. B. Seabrook (Author), William Buehler (Author)

Book Description

Series: Armchair Traveller | Publication Date: April 1994

1929. The author's West Indian mail boat lay at anchor in a tropical green gulf. At the water's edge, lit by sunset, sprawled the town of Cap Haitien. Among the modern structures were the wrecked mansions of the 16th century French colonials who imported slaves from Africa and made Haiti the richest colony in the western hemisphere. In the ruins was the palace built for Pauline Bonaparte when Napoleon sent his brother-in-law with an imperial army to do battle with slaves who had won their freedom. All this was panoramic as they lay at anchor, but as night fell, it faded to vagueness and disappeared. Only the jungle mountains remained, dark, mysterious; and from their slopes came presently far across the water the steady boom of Voodoo drums.

--This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

Product Details

• Paperback: 336 pages
• Publisher: Marlowe & Company (April 1994)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 1569249490
• ISBN-13: 978-1569249499
• Product Dimensions: 8.2 x 5.5 x 1.3 inches
• Shipping Weight: 11.2 ounces
• Average Customer Review: 4.5 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (2 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #1,964,465 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

26 of 26 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars A Fascinating Journey to Insanity, February 5, 2002

By 

Asmodeus (Spokane, WA United States) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Magic Island (Textbook Binding)

I must admit that I am drawn to musty, old books like a moth to a flame. I hapharzardly ran across a 1929 hardcover edition of Seabrook's "Magic Island" and was immediately struck by the dark and brooding illustrations as well as the marvelous old black & white photos within its yellowed leaves. A brief thumbing through the chapter listings announced its topic to me: voodoo and black magic in Haiti.

Seabrook was a well-travelled journalist and author of numerous newspaper articles, short stories, and books. "Magic Island" finds him living in turn of the century Haiti and takes you deep into his search for information about voodoo and black magic as practiced among the locals. You are not only stepping back into early 1900's society and ways, but into the unspoken underbelly of Haiti that few "white" men were ever allowed to see.

This book is simply fascinating from front to back, but best to take into consideration the time period this was written and do not expect a rip-roaring-Indiana-Jones-style adventure that Hollywood has seemed to fill the current public's minds with. The book is indeed slow, as much of Seabrook's writing is of his conversations and meetings that ultimately lead him to the secret society and its practices. Have patience, though, and you will arrive to the "juicy" center and the voodoo rites Seabrook was allowed to witness and sometimes even participate in as an initiate.

I would suggest getting an early edition of this wonderful book as I did. By literally holding in your hands something that is as old as the story itself, it seems to somehow bring you a sense of proper time displacement and aids with the immersion into Seabrook's journey.

I look forward to reading other books by Seabrook as his life was as fascinating as it was sordid: author, world traveller, acquaintence of Aleister Crowley, chronic alcoholic, cannibalist, sexual sadist & masochist, and finally an institutionalized patient of the Rockland State Hospital up until his untimely suicide by an overdose of sleeping pills.

Perhaps his quests into the "other" side of human nature were merely a preamble to the bigger question of his ownself and his many demons that followed him. Regardless, you'll have fun going along for the ride.

10 of 12 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars How Voudon Was Viewed Between the Wars, August 12, 1999

By 

Dianna Deeley (San Francisco,, CA USA) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Magic Island (Armchair Traveller) (Paperback)

If you know Seabrook, and if you're halfway interested in magic, you should, you know how really well he writes. Most people are going to be interested primarily in the first section, which deals with "voodoo." He was much more open than most people of his era, and took as fair an approach to "voodoo" as was possible for a white man. If it doesn't look much like modern descriptions, that's because the religion is evolving.

Of real interest was his observation of the administration of Haiti. I was fascinated.

If they ever, ever reissue his "Witchcraft," snatch it up. I have an old copy, and it's wonderful.