Iquitos 1910

About the Book

Iquitos 1910 is based on the underground gay classic--Roger Casement’s description in his own of his voyage of investigation in the Putumayo region of the Amazon, with related passages on Alfred Russel Wallace who explored the same region in the mid 19th century. Memo Strozzi, aspiring writer and amateur entomologist, travels in the Amazon in search of Casement and Wallace, reaching Iquitos and later Tabatinga in Colombia where he is captured and gang raped by FARC guerrillas. Later, escaping, he makes his way up the Putumayo where he visits the old rubber stations. Iquitos 1910 also contains the Memo’s secret diaries, much like Casement’s in tone. This is a book of personal exploration, natural history, travel, eroticism and literary fun.

About the Author

Memo Strozzi was born in 1972, the son of a Cuban exile who was murdered in Miami when Memo was four. His mother died of drink in Mexico City when he was fourteen, the same year he dropped out of school. He later educated himself on the street and in public libraries while living, like Roger Casement, in a series of rented rooms. He early decided he would be a writer and from his late teens wrote number of highly original but unpublished works. Memo traveled and did research in the Amazon during 1997, following in the footsteps of Roger Casement and Alfred Russel Wallace. He went to London soon after this and died there suddenly, aged 25, leaving his entire opus unpublished. William Bryant is the author of Casement and The Birds of Paradise, a biography of Wallace. He has also written a novel based on the later T. E. Lawrence, Ross, portions of which have appeared in Evergreen Review.