The Edible Exile

Cuervo is a pampered Nicaraguan moneyman, funding a guerrilla war from his cushy Miami penthouse. Sixto is his hulking, pistol-packing attendant, whose job satisfaction is on the wane. When an aging mobster enters their lives with a promise to help the rebel cause—with a planeload of chickens originally intended for voodoo sacrifice—a tense situation turns combustible. From the wickedly funny mind of Carl Hiaasen comes “The Edible Exile,” a raucous story of sleazeball nihilists, lovable thugs, and jungle-weary freedom fighters who collide in a battle of wills, ego, and the almighty dollar.
This cheeky tale, written twenty-five years ago, set aside, and recently rediscovered, is a time-capsule glimpse of Miami during the over-the-top 1980s, when everyone was on the make and gross excess was the order of the day. In an intriguing twist, Hiaasen had lost his original ending to the story. “So I decided to write a new ending,” he says. “As a friend said, ‘How often does a writer get the opportunity to collaborate with a younger version of himself?’”
“The Edible Exile” is a wild romp through Hiaasen Country, sure to appeal to the outlaw in all of us.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Carl Hiaasen was born and raised in Florida, where he still lives with his incredibly tolerant family. He is the author of several bestselling novels, including “Strip Tease,” “Stormy Weather,” “Lucky You,” “Sick Puppy,” “Basket Case,” “Skinny Dip,” “Nature Girl,” “Star Island,” and, most recently, “Bad Monkey.” He has also written a number of novels for young readers: “Hoot,” “Flush,” “Scat,” and “Chomp.” At age twenty-three, he joined the “Miami Herald” as a general assignment reporter and went on to work for the paper’s weekly magazine and later its prizewinning investigations team. Since 1985, Hiaasen has been writing a regular column, which still appears most Sundays in the Herald’s opinion-and-editorial section. “Dance of the Reptiles,” a new collection of his columns, will be published in January 2014 by Vintage.
PRAISE FOR CARL HIAASEN
“A relentlessly sane voice in a hurricane of hypocrisy, hokum and hype.” —Dave Barry
“Does anyone remember what we did for fun before Hiaasen began turning out his satirical comedies?” —The San Francisco Chronicle
“Carl Hiaasen isn’t just Florida’s sharpest satirist—he’s one of the few funny writers left in the whole country … I think of him as a national treasure.” —Newsweek
“Hiaasen [is] a superb national satirist … A great American writer about the great American subjects of ambition, greed, vanity and disappointment.” —Entertainment Weekly
“No one writes about Florida with a more wicked sense of humor than Hiaasen.” —USA Today
“Hiaasen’s wasteland is as retributive as Cormac McCarthy’s, but funnier. . . . [His] pacing is impeccable, and the scenes follow one another like Lay’s potato chips.” —The New York Times Book Review
“Recalls Twain and Chandler in its mingling of the cultured and the coarse … The funniest writer around.” —Sunday Times of London