Elizabeth Nickson

The Monkey-Puzzle Tree is a work of fiction. Yet it would be misleading if I did not say that the bones of this story shaped the emotional climate of my childhood ... -- Elizabeth Nickson

Elizabeth Nickson, Canadian journalist, writer, author of The Monkey-Puzzle Tree.

During the fifties and sixties, the CIA ran a series of experiments on US and Canadian citizens using mind altering drugs, including LSD.

This was a period of paranoia, McCarthyism, Reds under every bed, even the film The Manchurian Candidate starring Frank Sinatra was banned.

Under the guise of 'treatment', with the help of willing doctors, the CIA carried out a series of experiments using hypertrophic drugs, including LSD.

One of these patients happened to be the author's mother.

Written as a novel, The Monkey-Puzzle Tree is a harrowing account of what happened to Elizabeth Nickson's mother. It is also an exploration of the mother-daughter relationship (cf work of Amy Tan).

Elizabeth Nickson has been widely acclaimed as a novelist for The Monkey-Puzzle Tree, her journalism less so.

She has written for many newspapers on both sides of the Atlantic including The Guardian, The Observer, The Independent, Tatler, The Sunday Telegraph, Vogue, Saturday Night, Chatelaine, Harper's Magazine, the Globe and Mail, National Post, Women's Post. Her journalistic output is seen as little more than right wing ranting. Her column for the National Post was discontinued for alleged plagiarism.

During the late 1980s and early 1990s, Elizabeth Nickson was European bureau chief of Life Magazine, during which time she arranged photo stories and interviewed Nelson Mandela, Margaret Thatcher, the Dalai Lama, and dozens of other leaders, movie and pop starts, politicians and royalty, as well as torture victims, political prisoners and criminals. She she is credited with the acquisition of Nelson Mandela's autobiography for Little Brown.

Elizabeth Nickson is building a carbon-neutral house on Saltspring Island and is writing a book about her experience. [see Building Green - If I can do it Anyone Can]

A copy of The Monkey-Puzzle Tree has been registered as a BookCrossing book. [see BCID BCID 5624944]

BookCrossing books are released into the wild and their progress tracked through the Internet via a unique Book Crossing ID (BCID).


Literature
(c) Keith Parkins 2007 -- November 2007 rev 0