The Mosquito Coast was published by Hamish Hamilton in 1981 and was nominated for the Booker Prize. It was adapted into a 1986 film starring Harrison Ford and a 2021 Apple TV+ series.
Allie Fox is a brilliant, self-taught inventor living in rural Massachusetts who becomes convinced that America is doomed — morally bankrupt, dependent on imported junk, headed for nuclear apocalypse. He uproots his wife and four children and takes them to the Mosquito Coast of Honduras, where he buys a small settlement called Jeronimo and begins building his vision: a self-sufficient community powered by “Fat Boy,” his invention — a machine that makes ice using ammonia absorption, without electricity.
The novel is narrated by Charlie, Allie’s thirteen-year-old son, who worships his father’s genius while gradually recognizing his madness. As Fat Boy is built and the community takes shape, Allie’s control becomes absolute and his paranoia deepens. When Reverend Spellgood (a missionary whom Allie despises) arrives with his evangelical Christianity, Allie’s hatred of religion combines with his mania to produce catastrophe: he poisons a group of guerrillas by trapping them in the ice machine, and the resulting explosion destroys Jeronimo.
Theroux modeled Allie Fox partly on his own father and partly on the archetype of American frontier idealism carried to its logical extreme: the Puritan settler, the Manifest Destiny pioneer, the Peace Corps volunteer — all expressions of the same conviction that America can remake the world in its image.
Collecting The Mosquito Coast
First edition (Hamish Hamilton, London, 1981): Boards with dust jacket.
Market values:
- UK first edition, fine in jacket: $80–$200
- US first edition (Houghton Mifflin): $40–$100
- Signed first: $200–$400