The Rum Diary

About “The Rum Diary”

The Rum Diary is an early novel by American writer Hunter S. Thompson. Written in the early 1960s, it was not published until 1998. The manuscript, started in 1959, was found among Thompson's papers by Johnny Depp. The story follows a journalist named Paul Kemp, who moves from New York to San Juan, Puerto Rico, in the 1950s to work for The Daily News. It is Thompson's second novel, coming after the still-unpublished Prince Jellyfish. (Summary adapted from Wikipedia, CC BY-SA 4.0.)