Madagascar is a drug. Between its dazzling culture and biosphere—ninety percent of its species found nowhere else—everything is beautiful. But nothing is possible.

The world’s fourth largest island is also its fourth most corrupt nation. The rivers run red.

In 2016, I flew thirty hours over three continents, into a singular adventure across 4000 kilometers of isolation. The roads eviscerate; the poverty steals your heart. The terrain follows, a spider web stranded in your peripheral vision.

In Bandits of Madagascar are man-eating trees and elephant birds, pirates and slaves, lemurs and chameleons and crocodile caves, cattle rustlers and rosewood thieves, and sapphires and silk and solicitude.

What always lurks, just over your shoulder, is a crooked spine. Thar be bandits.