Comments on: Good books to read before wandering about Central and South America

Question: Good books to read before wandering about Central and South America

airguitar — Fri, 11 Nov 2005 10:56:34 -0800

Good books to read before wandering about Central and South America for a few months?

Culture and history and politics. The relationships between neighbor countries and neighboring people. Current affairs in the context of a greater story.

By: vkxmai

vkxmai — Fri, 11 Nov 2005 11:01:06 -0800

'One Hundred Years of Solitude' by Gabriel Garcia Marquez
'Love in the Time of Cholera' also by GGM

By: skyboy

skyboy — Fri, 11 Nov 2005 11:16:31 -0800

Lost City of the Incas, by Hiram Bingham ("discoverer" of Macchu Picchu)
The Motorcycle Diaries, by Che Guevara (now available in movie form, which I quite liked.)

By: andrew cooke

andrew cooke — Fri, 11 Nov 2005 11:20:48 -0800

gonzalo contreras and alberto fuguet are two good current chilean writers who depict current/recent chilean culture (in spanish).

By: ambrosia

ambrosia — Fri, 11 Nov 2005 11:23:16 -0800

Can you be a little more specific, or is it still up in the air? Central and South America is a rather large place. If you are going to be wandering, I'll suggest The Motorcycle Diaries and/or its modern follow-up, Chasing Che. If you are going to Mexico and have some time on your hands, check out Enrique Krauze's informative Mexico: A Biography of Power. David McCullough's Path Between the Seas is a fascinating account of the construction of the Panama Canal.

By: AwkwardPause

AwkwardPause — Fri, 11 Nov 2005 11:26:36 -0800

The Jaguar Smile : A Nicaraguan Journey, by Salman Rushdie

By: ambrosia

ambrosia — Fri, 11 Nov 2005 11:27:59 -0800

On post-view, let me add another: 1491: New Revelations of the Americas Before Columbus.

By: goatdog

goatdog — Fri, 11 Nov 2005 11:52:47 -0800

Bruce Chatwin's In Patagonia is one of the best travel narratives ever written. It's about the southern end of South America, though, and I don't know how far south you were planning on going.

By: cyphill

cyphill — Fri, 11 Nov 2005 11:58:32 -0800

The Bridge of San Luis Rey - Thornton Wilder

and second In Patagonia

By: airguitar

airguitar — Fri, 11 Nov 2005 12:15:13 -0800

Can you be a little more specific, or is it still up in the air?

It is. The one place I'll be sure to visit is Honduras (my sister is a teacher there). After that I'm going to have to make it up, so I want to have some wits about me as I go. From early January through the end of February. Enough to read a paper or hold a conversation and find the new details against a background of common history or convention.

By: rongorongo

rongorongo — Fri, 11 Nov 2005 12:23:56 -0800

Maybe The House of the Spirits by Isabel Allende, The Power and The Glory by Graham Greene, some of Pablo Neruda's poetry or Joe Simpson's "Touching The Void". I'd also second 100 Years of Solitude and In Patagonia.

By: rongorongo

rongorongo — Fri, 11 Nov 2005 12:31:58 -0800

Read up on the history of the Maya also.

By: bumpkin

bumpkin — Fri, 11 Nov 2005 12:42:21 -0800

I second the In Patagonia / Bruce Chatwin nod, but obviously, less if you're going to stick around Central America.

But : absolutely read
Century of the Wind by Eduardo Galeano. Its the third book of a trilogy but, unlike the first two (Genesis and Faces and Masks), focusses on the 20th century in Latin America. Amazing stuff. (The first two take up themes of first contract between Europeans and Native Americans and colonialism, respectively.)

By: bmckenzie

bmckenzie — Fri, 11 Nov 2005 12:56:24 -0800

"Nostromo: A Tale of the Seaboard (1904), generally acknowledged to be Conrad's masterpiece, is set on the north coast of South America, but in no particular country, though resemblances to Chile, Venezuela, Colombia, Argentina, and Ecuador have all been noted in Conrad's portrayal of Costaguana." http://www.litencyc.com/php/sworks.php?rec=true&UID=3219

By: lukemeister

lukemeister — Fri, 11 Nov 2005 14:23:03 -0800

The Loss of El Dorado, a history by V. S. Naipaul.

By: lukemeister

lukemeister — Fri, 11 Nov 2005 14:38:27 -0800

... and A Death in Brazil by Peter Robb if you get that far east.

By: nitsuj

nitsuj — Fri, 11 Nov 2005 15:20:59 -0800

How about Road Fever by Tim Cahill for a lighter, funnier read?

If you define "adventure travel" as anything that's more fun to read about than to live through, then Tim Cahill's Road Fever is the adventure of a lifetime. Along with professional long-distance driver Garry Sowerby, Cahill drove 15,000 miles from the southernmost tip of Tierra del Fuego to the northernmost terminus of the Dalton Highway in Prudhoe Bay, Alaska, from one end of the world to another, in a record-breaking 23 1/2 days. Just like the authors' camper-shelled GMC Sierra truck, the narrative bounces along at a relentless pace. Along the way Cahill and Sowerby cope with mood swings, engine trouble, Andean cliffs, obstinate bureaucracies, slick highways, armed and uncomprehending soldiery (not to mention the challenges of securing O.P.M., or Other People's Money--the sine qua non of adventure, Cahill observes).

By: Joseph Gurl

Joseph Gurl — Fri, 11 Nov 2005 17:40:27 -0800

a great one, Nostromo (also the name of the space ship in Aliens haha). It's older, and showsa more 19th C. attitude about S. America, but it's a superb book & does have a real sense of S. American beginnings & the colonial period.

By: Melinika

Melinika — Sat, 12 Nov 2005 07:52:07 -0800

One I haven't seen mentioned yet is The Old Patagonian Express by Paul Theroux.

By: johoney

johoney — Fri, 23 Dec 2005 16:07:51 -0800

The fruit Palace

is a rip roaring tale through Colombia, a great back packers read and insight into the cocaine business.