As a kid delivering newspapers in Winnipeg, Rex Bartlett had the honour of handing The Star Weekly to Neil Young. But at the time, neither Neil nor Rex had any inkling that their ho-hum encounter would become a hilarious chapter in a book about the remote tropical island where the Emperor Napoleon died.
     Curious Little World - A Self-Imposed Exile on St. Helena Island is Rex's twistedly funny account of his move from Winnipeg to the tiny island in the South Atlantic Ocean.
     With his partner, Cynthia Barefoot, Rex exchanges the long cold winters of Winnipeg for the tropical sun - in a most unusual place.
     St. Helena appears on the globe as a mere fly-speck about halfway between Africa and South America. No airplane has ever landed there. And only one ship makes regular voyages to the sunny little island from the distant outside world.
     It was the island's amazing isolation that prompted the British to jail Napoleon Bonaparte on St. Helena until his death there in 1821. And the islanders, or "Saints" as they're called, claim that Napoleon put a curse on the island "for all time." Bravely taking on the job of "curse buster," Rex does battle with the Emperor's ghost and ends up revealing what Napoleon was REALLY doing with his hand inside his shirt all the time.
     A very off-beat book about a very off-the-beaten-track place, Curious Little World is full of surprises. But perhaps the biggest surprise is that, in spite of laughing so hard, we actually learn so much about this unknown paradise - St. Helena, the Jewel Of The South Atlantic.