South and Central America

 

A selection of books on Latin American countries including Central America and Mexico.

A Visit to Don Otavio

Sybille Bedford

Mexico, through the eyes of Sybille Bedford is a country of passion and paradox: arid desert and shrieking jungle, harsh sun and deep shadow, violence and sentimentality. In her frank descriptions of the horrors of travel - through bug-infested jungle, trapped in a broiling stationary train, or in a bus with a dead fish slapping against her face - she gains our trust.

But it is the charmed world of Don Otavio which steals our imagination. He is, she says, "one of the kindest men I ever met". She stays in his crumbling ancestral mansion, living a life of provincial ease and observing with glee the intense life of a Mexican neighbourhood.

Eland 1953

ISBN 0907871879

Pbk £12.99

The Savage Detectives

Roberto Bolano

New Year's Eve 1975, Mexico City. Two hunted men leave town in a hurry, on the desert-bound trail of a vanished poet. Spanning two decades and crossing continents, theirs is a remarkable quest through a darkening universe. It is a journey told and shared by a generation of lovers, rebels and readers, whose testimonies are woven together into one of the most dazzling Latin American novels of the twentieth century.

Picador 2007

ISBN 9780330445153

Pbk £8.99

In Patagonia

Bruce Chatwin

Fascinated by Patagonia ever since an early childhood lust for his Grandma's scrap of hairy Giant Sloth skin, Bruce Chatwin is intrigued by odd miners, Darwin, the Welsh and the log cabin built by Butch Cassidy. From Rio Negro to the southernmost town of Ushuaia, Chatwin depicts all in writing as spare as the Patagonian desert and as vibrant as the purple clouds off Last Hope Sound.

For more books by Bruce Chatwin, click here.

Vintage 1977, 2006

ISBN 9780099769514

Pbk £7.99

Living to tell the Tale

Gabriel García Márquez

Living to Tell the Tale spans Gabriel García Márquez's life from his birth in Columbia in 1927, through his emerging career as a writer, up to the 1950s and his proposal to the woman who would become his wife.  Insightful, daring and beguiling in equal measure, it charts how García Márquez's astonishing early life influenced the man who, more than any other, has been hailed as one of the twentieth century's greatest and most-beloved writers.

Penguin 2004

(Translated from Spanish)

ISBN 0141019425

Pbk £7.99

At the Tomb of the Inflatable Pig: A Riotous Journey into the Heart of Paraguay

John Gimlette

Paraguay - the name conjures up everything most exotic and extreme in South America. It's a place of hellish jungles, dictators, fraudsters and Nazis, utopian experiments, missionaries and lurid coups. It's not a place for the timid. There isn't even a guidebook. However, Paraguay, as revealed in this outstanding new book, is among the most beautiful and captivating countries in the world. The beguiling Paraguayans, despised and feared by their neighbours, are unfathomable. They adore Britain (hundreds volunteered to fight for Britain in the Falklands War), have a taste for soccer and, when the Vice-President is murdered, they call in Scotland Yard. A brilliant evocation of a country capturing Paraguay's originality, passion, quirkiness and contradictions.

Arrow 2003

ISBN 0099416557

Pbk £7.99

The Motorcycle Diaries

Ernesto 'Che' Guevara

In 1952, the twenty-three-year-old Che Guevara set out to explore South America with his friend Alberto Granado.  These are his diaries - full of disasters and discoveries, high drama and low comedy.  During his travels through Argentina, Chile, Peru and Venezuela, Che's main concerns are where the next drink is coming from, where the next bed is to be found and who might be around to share it.  Within a decade the whole world would know his name.  His trip might have been the adventure of a lifetime - had his lifetime not turned into a much greater adventure.

Harper Perennial 2004

ISBN 0007172338

Pbk £7.99

Gabriel García Márquez - Memories of My Melancholy Whores.

Nick Creagh-Osborne writes:

In just over one hundred pages Márquez gives us a tale of the anguish and transformative power of love told in prose as dense and lush as tropical vegetation.  At the time of his ninetieth birthday the narrator falls head over heals in love with his imaginary equivalent of a fourteen year old prostitute.  He has only ever known women for whom he has paid and we follow him as he struggles with unfamiliar emotions for which, unlike the angora cat he is given as a birthday present, there is no instruction manual. 

A fulfilling read in which every word is exquisitely weighed and balanced so that even the addition of a single sentence would render the whole less complete.

Jonathan Cape 2005

ISBN 0224077643

Hbk £10.00

Robert Whitaker - The Mapmaker's Wife

Nick Creagh-Osborne writes:

In the 1720's, during the peace which followed the end of the Spanish War of Succession, scientific debate raged in Europe.  Proponents of either Newton or Descartes hotly disputed the size and shape of the earth, the laws of gravitation and those of planetary motion.

As Spain sank into isolationism, reviving the Inquisition and closing its New World empire to foreigners a French scientific expedition was permitted to penetrate the Andean interior of Peru.

Years later, as the expedition draws to a close, its youngest member, Jean Godin, who has married Isabel Grameson, the daughter of a local family, journeys on ahead over the mountains and down the Amazon to find a route to bring his wife back to France.  Then, disaster strikes; the borders between French and Spanish territories are closed and Jean is stranded for twenty years in French Guiana.

Eventually Isabel follows him down the Amazon.  Her epic journey becomes a horrifying nightmare as she left the only survivor of the expedition, alone and starving to confront the terrors of the jungle.

The book is a fitting memorial to an exceptional woman whose tale of  courage and endurance is one of the greatest journeys in all Travel.

Bantam 2005

ISBN 0553815393

Pbk £7.99

Havana

Robert Polidori

Robert Polidori, often considered an architectural photographer, is in fact a photographer of habitat. On the surface his subjects are buildings, but at the core his lens is focused on the remnants and traces of living he finds scattered in hallways, left in back rooms and worn on facades. Havana is a particularly rich setting for Polidori's inquiries. The curves and columns that line the streets refer to past eras and speak of the political, social and economic forces that have driven the city to its present condition. Through his rigorous and sensitive examination - facilitated by a sense of color and composition that makes his photographs feel like vivid memories - Polidori delicately peels away the patina of daily living and reveals the juxtapositions that create a city's identity. In this city the peddler lives where the countess once resided; children dance and tumble where merchants conducted their business. Each photograph is a discovery and a fragment of the city's biography.

Steidl Verlag 2001

ISBN 3882433337

Hbk £48.00

White Woman on a Green Bicycle

Monique Roffey

When George and Sabine Harwood arrive in Trinidad from England George instantly takes to their new life, but Sabine feels isolated, heat-fatigued, and ill at ease with the racial segregation and the imminent dawning of a new era. Her only solace is her growing fixation with Eric Williams, the charismatic leader of Trinidad's new national party, to whom she pours out all her hopes and fears for the future in letters that she never brings herself to send. As the years progress, George and Sabine's marriage endures for better or worse. When George discovers Sabine's cache of letters, he realises just how many secrets she's kept from him - and he from her - over the decades. And he is seized by an urgent, desperate need to prove his love for her, with tragic consequences...

The latest novel from talented writer Monique Roffey.

Simon & Schuster 2009

(Signed Copies Available)

ISBN 1847375006

Pbk £12.99

Galapagos: The Islands that Changed the World

Paul D. Stewart

For travel truly off the beaten track, the Galapagos Islands are the perfect destination. This beautifully illustrated account of the islands' journey through time highlights the islands geological, biological and human stories.

BBC Books 2006

ISBN 9780563493563

Pbk £18.99

 

Back to previous page.