Inspired by a dusty fez in his parents attic, Jeremy Seal set off in 1993 to trace the astonishing history of this cone-shaped hat. Soon the quintessentially Turkish headgear became the key to understanding a country beset by contradictions. A modern travel classic (Herald Express).
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Snakes are Jeremy Seal's fascination, and his greatest fear. In an attempt to overcome his phobia, he decides to journey into America, Australia, Africa and India in search of the most notorious and deadly snakes, and to meet the people who live among them. His travels take him to Kenya's snake man, whose entire life seems like a preparation for a bite from the terrible black mamba, and to witch doctors, who use snakes as instruments of vengeance. He recalls the stories of Australian convicts condemned to prison in the land of the world's deadliest snake, and the story of a Southern preacher...

While walking through a cliff-top graveyard in the town of Morwenstow on the coast of Cornwall, the author encounters a wooden Scottish figurehead that once adorned the Caledonia, a ship wrecked on the English coast in 1842. Through further investigation, Seal begins to suspect the townspeople, and chiefly the town's parson, Robert Hawker, for the Caledonia's demise on the jagged shores below. Though no one has ever been brought to court for "wrecking"--luring ships ashore to loot the cargo--it's a commonly held belief that this sort of cruelty did take place. But, is that what...

This is Jeremy Seal's quest, by means of a fez, for the heart of a country culturally and spiritually at odds with herself. The fez's opposing associations - both revered Eastern-Islamic headdress and banal tourist souvenir - exactly reflects Turkey's cultural faultline. While Turkey pays court to the EC and becomes the latest mecca for mass-tourism, the resurgent voices of Islamic traditionalism and Kurdish separatism are stark reminders of the country's complex cultural topography.