Steven Froelich – författare

Fresh from a night in a Miami jail, Steven lands in Guatemala City, ready for riotous road trips fuelled by booze, cocaine and passionate curiosity about people from all walks of life. His guide? Antonio, a sweet-natured, streetwise hotel concierge who shepherds Steven through colonial Antigua, the volcanic shores of Lake Atitlán and the untamed beaches of Monterrico. Danger is never far off, but neither are laughs – and there’s plenty of both when Steven accompanies Antonio on a visit to his rural home village. Then there’s Anabella, a glamourous, garrulous, middle-aged woman with whom Steven strikes up an unlikely friendship, accompanying her back to the capital with her family. There he mooches an open-ended stay in her gated community, which bristles with armed guards and famous eccentrics. Froelich’s gonzo travelogue is a darkly hilarious, unapologetic plunge into beauty and madness, privilege and privation. With a raw, witty voice, Froelich explores the absurdities of the human condition, never letting truth get in the way of a good story.

He’s back! In this second travel memoir, The Man Without a Plan lands in Belize, a country about which he knows nada. But he quickly amasses an array of new friends – some of whom can even match his penchant for being in a near-constant buzz from industrial-quantity drugs and drink.As ever, the characters with whom Steven ingratiates himself become his surrogate (dysfunctional) family. But Tracey, Devonais, Ask Bobby!, Valentino and a pack of kids led by the feral Molokai soon have Steven suspecting that his cheerfully transactional relationships are, in fact, ensnaring him in a web of scams. Will he be left for broke, stranded in this shabby paradise? Is his paranoia justifiable, or the result of continuous cocaine use? His response is to embark with the gang on a road trip along the coast, taking in shantytowns, hotels, beaches and, at a low ebb, jail.Coarse, irresponsible and wilfully uninformed, Froelich is nevertheless observant and interested. Belize is about the ways in which chaotic, complex human beings find community, no matter where they’re from or where they’re headed.

People often assume that Steven Froelich is a rock star, with his flowing blond locks and manic ‘where’s the party at!’ vibe. His Keith Richards-level consumption of narcotics and booze does nothing to dispel the impression.Froelich has now set his sights on the reputed El Dorado of ‘white gold’. Colombia: Playing with Powder is the latest instalment of his Latin American travel memoirs – a peripatetic trail of debauched cocaine use, furtive transactions in hostels, taxis and bars, and oddball characters.Froelich’s trademark illiberal rants, unfiltered stream of consciousness and indifference to social or political tensions unpeel the workings of the mind of a true addict; but equally, he yearns for a more elusive substance than cocaine: human connection