From Publishers Weekly

A madman named Aloysius lives alone in the Jamaican bush until a German photojournalist named Inga snaps pictures of him as he sleeps. She soon moves in with him, and their life together is filled with misunderstandings, violence and much sex. In this tale of erotic fun in the sun, trees and animals are personifiedfor example, when Inga, in a fit of anger, bites a tree trunk, the tree cries in pain. But this fanciful novel also has a political edge: Inga comes to believe that poor Jamaicans should hate those who are rich, and she promotes an uprising. Although The Lunatic can be read as a comic novel, it also can be considered a warning against both greed and apathy.

Copyright 1987 Reed Business Information, Inc. --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

Book Description

In this outrageously out-of-order, hilarious novel, the reader discovers that lunacy is by no means restricted to the village madman, and that goodness and forgiveness may be rarer qualities, found in unexpected places.

Aloysius is tolerated by neighbors but forced to eke out a living by doing odd jobs, using the hospitable woodlands for shelter. He is starved of human companionship; instead he has running conversations with trees and plants. Then love, or a peculiar version of it, comes to Aloysius in the form of a solidly built German lady, Inga Schmidt, who has come to Jamaica to photograph the flora and fauna.