Mad White Giant

Mad White Giant begins with Allen recounting the role of Amazonia in his childhood fantasies.[2] The novel then describes the author's travels between the Orinoco and the Amazon rivers, a trip of over 1500 miles.[1] During his travels, he befriends natives who refer to him as "Mad White Giant", or by his preferred nickname Louco Benedito.[2]

Allen is later abandoned by his two Carib companions, Yepe and Pim, who go to work for Brazilian miners.[2] Allen also adopts a dog, named Cashoe (meaning 'dog' in one of the Indian dialects), whose actions capsize Allen's canoe and leave him stranded in the Amazonian jungle. After a grueling period of starvation, recounted as a series of diary entries (actually written in one sitting[3]), Allen decides to shoot and eat Cashoe to survive.[4][5]

The publication of Mad White Giant was greeted with some controversy.[5] Allen was visited by two RSPCA inspectors who inquired about the welfare of his family pets.[1] Several commentators doubted that Allen could have travelled his reported route within three months, leading to the cancellation of a lecture he was to give to the Royal Geographical Society.[5] Allen admits that Mad White Giant is "unreliable" in terms of factual detail, a deliberate bid to distance his novel from the traditional travelogue genre.[1] He also attributes any potential inaccuracies to the loss of his notes in a canoe capsizing, and in changes made to protect a travelling companion.[5] Allen stated of his novel's integrity:

I think of myself as a very truthful person and it upsets me if people think I'm a fraud. The book wasn't meant to be a scientific document. It was an adventure story which veiled an angry cry against what the white man has done and how we are going about exploiting these places. [...] I felt I was being criticised for writing about a very real journey as if it was a standard travelogue, which it quite clearly wasn't.[5]

Douglas Ivison considers Mad White Giant to be written "within a tradition of British writing, in which boys had to venture out to the colonies in order to learn to become men."[2] He further argues, however, that Allen achieves a "transcendence" that distances his writing from the "imperialist and capitalist, even patriarchal, discourses in which it is embedded."[2]