The day I came closest to death, I fell asleep high up a remote volcano in Ecuador, reading Moby Dick, in Spanish. I'd been reading the English edition for several weeks already, but it was stolen on the road. The Spanish edition fell into my lap, and later into my bag, at a backpackers' along the way. Whilst Moby Dick saved my life, Kitchen Confidential and In Patagonia both changed my life, in very different but equally beneficial ways.
Anthony Bourdain's cult classic (excuse the cliche) was given to me in hardback on the day of British publication by a very good friend who, at the time, was head chef in a restaurant I managed. I ate every word (pun included), and found myself asking why nobody from the front of house was ever in the limelight? I read Orwell's Down and Out in Paris and London and wrote my own catering memoir as a result.
And so, Wayne, out of the blue bought me and gave me a book that would become a Bible for years to come.
Years earlier it was a friend Alice, herself the step-daughter of Ian McEwan (whose Amsterdam Wayne would also give me - again in hardback), who handed In Patagonia to me once she'd finished it, as the truck we were in rumbled south from Rio de Janeiro, headed towards Ushuaia and Tierra del Fuego.
Nick Green is the author of several books, all published by Black Crake Books. He lives in Botswana with his wife, Princess.
www.blackrakebooks.com
