Unflinchingly honest about his family, his failures, his already broken health at the age of sixty?three and the loss of the hopes he once had for himself, Thomsen is also sickened by the corruption and rapacity of our societies, the inequality and the economic destitution. What starts as an almost reluctant concatenation of memory and poignant, limpid descriptions of Brazil, grows into a shattering romantic symphony on human misery and life s small but exquisite transcendent pleasures. He spares the reader nothing.

At the age of 48, Moritz Thomsen sold his pig farm and joined the Peace Corps. As he tells the story, his awareness of the comic elements in the human situation -- including his own -- and his ability to convey it in fast-moving, earthy prose have made Living Poor a classic.

"Hilariously funny at times, grimly sad at others and leavened with perceptive insights into the ways of the people and with breathtaking descriptions of the Ecuadorian landscape". -- St. Louis Post-Dispatch