Ann patchett book about the amazon

State of Wonder is a novel by American author Ann Patchett. It is the story of pharmacologist Marina Singh, who journeys to Brazil to bring back information about seemingly miraculous drug research being conducted there by her former teacher, Dr. Annick Swenson. It was critically well received, and was nominated for the Wellcome Trust Book Prize and the Orange Prize for Fiction , among other nominations. The novel opens with Dr. Marina Singh reading a letter from Dr.

In State of Wonder , Ann Patchett charts the changes in a doctor's life when she is sent to investigate the death of a research colleague among a remote Amazon tribe whose women unexplainably remain fertile well into old age. Also, they may have the cure for malaria. I was really interested in malaria—Africa would have been better for malaria, or Indonesia—but then I thought, oh, not another continent! The Amazon is really excellent for the imagination. Did you travel there to do research for the book? I did.