* Indicates a book that appears in our feature "Around the World in 80+ Books" published in the April 2002 issue of National Geographic Traveler.
*Andes, photographs by Pablo Corral Vega, text by Mario Vargas Llosa (2001). Ecuadorian photographer Corral Vega travels the entire length of the Andes—nearly 5,000 miles (8,047 kilometers)—and discovers a stretch of remarkable human and geographic diversity.
Bluestocking in Patagonia, by Anne Whitehead (2003). In 1895, young Australian schoolteacher Mary Jean Cameron set sail from Sydney to join an experimental socialist utopia deep in the interior of Paraguay. Traveling alone via mailboat, paddle steamer, steam train, and horseback, hers is an extraordinary journey—and that was just the beginning of her adventures. Author Whitehead follows in the footsteps of this fascinating woman who ended up spending six years in South America, first in Paraguay and then Argentina—and whose portrait now appears on the $10 Australian bill.
*In Patagonia, by Bruce Chatwin (1977). Let's face it: Chatwin was weird, but brilliantly so. This book, launched around a childhood fancy for his grandma's scrap of giant sloth skin, takes him to the "uttermost part of the Earth," from Rio Negro to the Chilean town of Punta Arenas.
The Motorcycle Diaries: A Latin American Journey, by Ernesto Che Guevara (2003). After they quit their jobs, a pre-revolutionary Guevara and his friend Alberto journey across South America on an old motorcycle. The duo encounters a variety of people—workers, lepers, and members of polite society—as they adventure through Argentina, Chile, Peru, Colombia, and Venezuela.
*Nothing to Declare: Memoirs of a Woman Traveling Alone, by Mary Morris (1988). Emotive, gutsy Morris deserves a place on one of those morning TV talk shows. Her memoir of living in the Mexican town San Miguel de Allende and her travels around Central America highlight the challenge of residing in a foreign land, and the lessons in self-understanding that come from such an escape.
*The Old Patagonian Express: By Train through the Americas, by Paul Theroux (1979). The delight in Theroux and his many books is that, although he's a curmudgeon and a complainer, he's fun to read. It's amusing to watch him hopscotch train-to-train from Boston to the tip of Argentina, stopping in dozens of annoying (to him) places on the way.
*Road Fever: A High-Speed Travelogue, by Tim Cahill (1991). Tierra del Fuego, Chile, to Prudhoe Bay, Alaska (15,000 miles [24,140 kilometers]), by truck in 23.5 days? Better pack the No-Doz. Better yet, read Cahill's killer diary of his Guinness Book of World Records-making road trip and be glad you're at home. This book ups the ante on driving "vacations."
Tales of a Shaman's Apprentice, by Mark Plotkin (1994). "Every time a shaman dies, it is as if a library burned down," writes Plotkin. The famed botanist journeys by canoe and traipses through the thick jungles of Suriname, Venezuela, Guyana, and French Guiana, cataloging the region's diverse herbal medicines. His gripping account is part action-adventure tale, part conservation plea, warning against the dangers of cultural and ecological exploitation.
Travelers' Tales, Central America, ed. by Larry Habegger and Natanya Pearlman (2002). Sparkling with contributions from the likes of Paul Theroux and Rigoberta Menchu, this collection of stories features true travelers' tales from Belize, Costa Rica, El Salvador, Guatemala, Honduras, Nicaragua, and Panama. The stories range from baseball heaven in Contra-era Nicaragua to El Salvador's surfing scene both pre- and post-civil war. A sturdy, candid introduction to the at times tumultuous, yet gracious countries of Central America from the outside in.
Argentina
Borges: Collected Fictions, by Jorge Luis Borges (1998). Argentina's Borges is best known for his short stories. The works in this collection, which are arranged chronologically, include the detective story "The Garden of the Forking Paths" and the metaphysical "The Aleph." Borges's fictions are full of labyrinths, gauchos, and knife fights. Although not all of the stories are set in Argentina, some, such as "The South," paint a picture of Buenos Aires and beyond.
The Whispering Land, by Gerald Durrell (1961). Follow Gerald Durrell and his wife on an eight-month safari through Argentina as they gather (or attempt to gather) specimens for England's Jersey Zoo. Their jeep rumbles through Argentina's diverse regions, from bleak Patagonia to Buenos Aires to Calilegua's cane fields and teeming jungles. Along the way they encounter penguins, ocelots, elephant seals, vampire bats, and some rather bizarre humans, all of which Durrell describes with humor and insight.
Belize
Beka Lamb, by Zee Edgell (1982). Awarded the Fawcett Society Book Prize as the first novel by a Belizean writer to reach an international audience, Beka Lamb details a few months in the life of 12-year-old Beka, a thoughtful yet mischievous girl coming of age in colonial, multiethnic Belize. The melodious creole voices of many of the book's characters charge to the surface in this atmospheric and very accessible novel about everyday life among the cays of Belize.
The Last Flight of the Scarlet Macaw,by Bruce Barcott (2008). Former Iowa housewife Sharon Matola launches a crusade to save the nesting grounds of Belize's last scarlet macaws from developers in this gripping true story.
Bolivia
The Fat Man from La Paz: Contemporary Fiction from Bolivia, edited by Rosario Santos (2000). Twenty offerings ranging from meditative vignettes to sprawling short stories commemorate 75 years of Bolivian literature and Andean culture. "The Well" follows a group of soldiers futilely digging for water, their efforts paralleling the very war they are fighting against the ruling class.
Brazil
At Play in the Fields of the Lord, by Peter Matthiessen (1965). In this fictional thriller, Matthiessen takes readers to an isolated settlement in the nearly impenetrable Brazilian Amazon rain forest where a group of Christian missionaries and a pair of hired-gun mercenaries clash over the land and souls of the indigenous Amazonian tribe. This novel was made into a movie in 1991.
*Brazilian Adventure, by Peter Fleming (1933). For a moment, forget about the magic of modern-day Rio and go hunting for a missing British adventurer in the jungles of Brazil with Fleming, the Hugh Grant of 1930s journalism. Underprepared, overwhelmed, but undaunted, Fleming and his mates marched, canoed, and fought through 3,000 miles (4,828 kilometers)of Amazon wilderness.
Fordlandia, by Eduardo Sguiglia (2000). Argentinian writer Sguiglia bases his engaging first novel on a historical trivia tidbit: car manufacturer Henry Ford's attempt in 1929 to establish a rubber plantation in the Brazilian Amazon rain forest. Detroit efficiency meets the jungle's malaria, snakes, insects, and corrupt human administrators—guess who wins?
Rio de Janeiro: Carnival Under Fire, by Ruy Castro (2003). In this fifth entry in Bloomsbury's The Writer and the City series, Brazilian journalist Castro explores the social history and daily life of Rio, his hometown, taking readers on a lively journey from the streets to the ballrooms to the beaches, telling the humorous and scandalous stories of the Cariocas, Rio's colorful residents.
Samba, by Alma Guillermoprieto (1990). Appearing initially as essays in the New Yorker, journalist Guillermoprieto's work delves into the samba and Brazilian Carnaval culture. In order to learn about the distinctly Brazilian dance and style of music, Guillermoprieto moves into one of Rio's favelas for a year and joins a samba club.
Tales of a Shaman's Apprentice, by Mark J. Plotkin (1994). "Every time a shaman dies, it is as if a library burned down," ethnobotanist Plotkin writes. He travels deep into the Amazon to study the ancient tribal remedies of the indigenous shamans, remedies that are in danger of being lost from both environmental pressures and the fact that younger tribal members aren't stepping up to be apprentices. As Plotkin gains acceptance into these reclusive tribes, he learns about much more than just their herbal cures, but also their poisons, psychedelics, and endangered way of life.
Chile
By Night in Chile, by Roberto Bolaño (2000). The deathbed confessions of a Jesuit priest in Santiago justifies how he got caught up in behind-the-scenes Chilean politics, from the assassination of Allende to the dictatorship of Pinochet. This acclaimed novel by the Chilean Bolaño—hailed by El Pais as one of Latin America's "brightest literary stars" (and who died in exile in Barcelona in 2003)—comments lyrically and with satiric wit on the relationship between church and state in Chile and the personal price one man pays for his ambitions.
My Invented Country: A Nostalgic Journey Through Chile, by Isabel Allende (2003). In this memoir of growing up in Chile, bestselling author Allende explores how a country shaped her own writing. Allende fled Santiago with her family after the assassination of her uncle, Chile's president Salvador Allende, in 1973. She now lives in California and writes here with self-acknowledged nostalgia about the Chilean personality, class system, and landscape ("a geological miracle between the heights of the cordillera and the depths of the sea").
Chile: A Traveler's Literary Companion, ed. by Katherine Silver (2003) This lively anthology contains 22 short stories, grouped geographically, from some of Chile's best writers, including Pablo Neruda (on Valparaiso) and Ariel Dorfman (on Santiago), but also lesser known names like Jose Donoso and Marta Brunet. What emerges is an appreciation of this South American country's great diversity, from the Atacama Desert to Tierra del Fuego.
The House of the Spirits, by Isabel Allende (1985). The epic story of the Trueba family begins at the turn of the last century. Although this magical-realist novel is set in an unspecified country in South America, the political events are similar to those of the author's native Chile. This bestseller, Allende's first book, offers a mix of reality and fantasy.
Colombia
Living to Tell the Tale (Vivir para Contarla), by Gabriel Garcia Marquez (2003). The first of three volumes of the Nobel laureate's memoirs begins in his hometown of Aracataca in northern Colombia. In his youth, Marquez travels the country's main waterway, the Magdalena River, and begins a journalism career, covering important historical events such as Bogota's 1948 riots. But one also sees the beginnings of a novelist, in the author's vivid memories of Aracataca. Readers of his magical novel One Hundred Years of Solitude may recognize the fictional town of Macondo.
Costa Rica
Costa Rica: A Traveler's Literary Companion, by Barbara Ras (1993). Experience the tropical diversity of Costa Rica through the fiction of 26 local authors including Fabián Dobles, Max Jiménez, and Carmen Lyra. The stories, arranged by region for easy reference, immerse readers in the local imagination and unfold across the nation's landscape from the coastal plains to the volcanic mountains.
Cuba
*Cuba, photographs by David Alan Harvey, text by Elizabeth Newhouse (1999). Photographer Harvey's camera captures, lovingly, this isle's beauty amid a Spanish-colonial backdrop. His portraits reveal ebullient, resourceful people.
The Handsomest Man in Cuba, by Lynette Chiang (2007). An expert at avoiding touristy resort towns, Lynette Chiang travels deep into Cuba's gritty ordinary communities on a folding bicycle and a tight budget. The color in Chiang's vividly painted recollections comes not from what she does, but from the characters she encounters. Fully dependent on local Cubans for food and shelter, Chiang discovers that Cuba's ordinary towns are filled with extraordinary people.
Havana: Autobiography of a City, by Alfredo José Estrada (2007). Alfredo José Estrada, founder of Hispanic magazine, returns to Cuba after 30 years of exile to reveal the essence of one of the oldest cities in the "New World" by walking in the footsteps of the figures that make Havana famous—Ponce de León, Guevara, Hemingway, and even the Buena Vista Social Club.
Dominican Republic
Dead Man in Paradise, by J. B. MacKinnon (2007). Part detective story, part memoir, and part travelogue, Dead Man in Paradise recounts MacKinnon's attempt to unravel the mystery of the murder of his uncle, an outspoken Catholic priest who was shot in 1965 outside the small Dominican Republic town where he had been living for four years.
Ecuador
*Galapagos: Islands Born of Fire, photographs and text by Tui De Roy (1998). Charles Darwin didn't have a camera, but if he had, his images might mirror these stunning glimpses of island life. For 35 years, De Roy lived among the world-famous blue-footed boobies, marine iguanas, and giant tortoises; her images and text convey wisdom gleaned from her own evolutionary immersion.
*The Panama Hat Trail: A Journey from South America, by Tom Miller (1986). What (besides your head) goes into a hat? Miller follows the making and marketing of Panama's famed hat and in so doing draws a fascinating picture of South America—in particular, Ecuador, where the hats are made.
Valverde's Gold: In Search of the Last Great Inca Treasure, by Mark Honigsbaum (2004). In this nonfiction page-turner, an adventurous journalist follows a 400-year-old map in search of buried gold. Starting in rainy Quito, Honigsbaum's journey takes him across the volcano-studded Llanganati Mountains of the Andes in search of mysterious, emerald-green lakes and Incan mines. His obsession deepens as he traces the history of conquest and greed through his visits to dusty archives, basilicas, and misty jungles.
El Salvador
Bitter Grounds, by Sandra Benitez (1998). Benitez's El Salvador revolves around coffee: it steams and entices even as it divides the locals. Set between the 1930s and the 1970s, Bitter Grounds depicts the stark contrasts between the lives of a wealthy family and the poor coffee pickers who work their lush plantation. Yet the hardships that befall those on both ends of the spectrum show that no one emerged unscathed from the country's bitter, political turmoil. Benitez's prose—punctuated with Spanish phrases—adds to the charm of this gripping novel, based in part on the author's own experiences.
Guatemala
Complete Works and Other Stories, by Augusto Monterroso (1995). A legend in Guatemalan fiction, Monterroso—known for writing what is widely considered to be the world's shortest story at eight words—creates satiric and fantastical scenarios reminiscent of Borges. Through sparse prose, he weaves dream-like stories of third world exploitation, conquest, and the foibles of a cast of characters from crooked businessmen to celebrity wives. In "The Eclipse," a colonial Spaniard tries to outwit the Mayans who capture him, only to realize that they are more advanced than he expected.
I, Rigoberta Menchú: An Indian Woman in Guatemala, by Rigoberta Menchú (1984). Exiled activist Menchú, who won the Nobel Peace Prize in 1992, calls upon traditional Mayan storytelling in this riveting memoir of her struggle on behalf of women and indigenous rights. Raised in the northern highlands as a farm laborer, Menchú went on to become a central figure in the Committee of the Peasant Union (CUC). Though some of the book's autobiographical details have been questioned, the events described are an undisputed part of Guatemalan history.
Guyana
The Ventriloquist's Tale, by Pauline Melville (1999). English scholar Rosa Mendelson travels to contemporary Georgetown, the capital of Guyana, to retrace the voyage of novelist Evelyn Waugh. Soon, she embarks on a steamy, forbidden romance with a local half-Indian, half-Scot cattle rancher. Their illicit relationship echoes another doomed and incestuous affair that takes place in the 1920s. Melville brilliantly jumps from past to present, weaving these dual romances together with native folklore and Guyanaian history in a story that won Britain's prestigious Whitbread First Novel Award.
Honduras
Don't Be Afraid, Gringo: A Honduran Woman Speaks from the Heart, by Elvia Alvarado (1987). Her father was a campesino, and she spent her youth waking at three a.m. to make tortillas and help with housework. But Alvarado rose from a life of poverty and a second-grade education to become a well-known activist on behalf of her country's peasants. Here, she recalls her girlhood catechism class, dances in the village square, and her transformation to an advocate, all while painting a portrait of daily life in rural Honduras.
The Mosquito Coast, by Paul Theroux (1982). A disgruntled American intellectual, Allie Fox packs up his suburban family and travels to Honduras by ship, hoping to rid himself of the trappings of modern life. On the coast at La Ceiba, he buys a remote property and begins anew, but soon discovers that much is beyond his control in the wild jungle. Fox's son, Charlie, the 14-year-old narrator, adapts by building shelters and learning about the area's lush plants, yet Allie remains unsatisfied as his dream of finding peace seems forever out of reach. Mosquito Coast was also a 1986 film starring Harrison Ford, Helen Mirren, and River Phoenix.
Nicaragua
The Country Under My Skin: A Memoir of Love and War, by Gioconda Bella (2002). This is the moving, tragic, yet inspiring autobiography of Gioconda Belli, award-winning Nicaraguan poet, wife, Sandinista, mother, and acclaimed author of The Inhabited Woman.Belli recounts how she parlayed her bourgeois background into the perfect alibi for transgression as a part of the underground Sandinista movement in the 1970s against dictator Somoza. Belli describes Nicaragua as a country of wide lakes and "abundant foliage like a wild woman's mane." Her memories and thoughts lovingly evoke her home country from which she was once exiled. Those interested in Nicaragua's troubled recent past will be intrigued by Belli's very personal, very impassioned, rooted telling.
Panama
Come Together, Fall Apart: A Novella and Stories, by Cristina Henríquez (2006). This debut novella and eight short stories roam the humid beaches and dusty city streets of a contemporary Panama in transition. One story, "Mercury," tells of a visiting American girl's attempts to communicate with her Panamanian grandfather in her broken Spanish.
Paraguay
At the Tomb of the Inflatable Pig: Travels Through Paraguay, by John Gimlette (2004). Gimlette, a London lawyer and writer, recounts humor-filled anecdotes from his travels over two decades to Paraguay.He meetsMennonites and socialites, and visits some unusual spots, such as the Asunción Yacht Club—where he sits at a table near Tito Valiente, "the restaurateur who shot his mother."
The News From Paraguay, by Lily Tuck (2004). This National Book Award Winner is an exhaustively researched work of historical fiction that traces the 19th-century love affair between Irish beauty Ella Lynch and Paraguay's infamous dictator Francisco (Franco) Solano Lopez. After meeting in Europe, the pair sail to Paraguay's capital, Asunción, where, as Ella learns, the women smoke cigars. She bears five sons as her lover sets about making war, taking mistresses, and living extravagantly as the country descends into ruins.
Peru
The Bridge of San Luis Rey, by Thornton Wilder (1927). This classic, which won Wilder the first of three Pulitzers, takes us to Peru in the 18th century, where an Incan suspension bridge connecting Lima and Cuzco collapses, sending five people to their deaths. Witnessing the tragedy, a Franciscan monk sets out on a quest to prove that their deaths were the will of God. As he explores the intertwined lives of these seeming strangers, what emerges is a richly complex tale of love, faith, and mortality.
Cellophane, by Marie Arana (2006). Don Victor Sobrevilla's single-minded quest to manufacture cellophane in his paper factory in the heart of the Amazon rain forest leads to surprising family revelations in this exuberant first novel by a native of Peru and current editor of the Washington Post Book World.
The Last Days of the Incas, by Kim MacQuarrie (2007). How did a working-class Spaniard named Francisco Pizarro topple the vast empire of Incan Emperor Atahualpa with less than 200 men? With meticulous research and compelling storytelling, author and filmmaker MacQuarrie details conquistadors' strategies and how the Incas reacted to colonial rule.
The Lost City, by Henry Shukman (2008). With poetic precision, Shukman conjures the cloud forest to life, in this powerful novel about a young, British ex-soldier's search for an ancient ruined city in a little-explored region of the Peruvian highlands.
Uruguay
The Tree of Red Stars, by Tessa Bridal (1997). Bridal parses the 1970s military occupation of her native Uruguay from the perspective of a privileged teenager, Magda. Magda's barrio in Montevideo, her favorite poinsettia tree, the cardboard shacks that surround her, all take on new meaning as she watches the country becoming a dictatorship, and, in the process, she herself becomes a passionate revolutionary for her homeland. Winner of the prestigious Milkweed National Fiction Prize.
Venezuela
Doña Inés vs. Oblivion, by Ana Teresa Torres (1992). The widow Doña Inés narrates this tale from the grave, as she struggles to keep the plantation that has been in the family for generations out of the hands of her husband's illegitimate children. Based on a real court case about disputed land, the tale spans nearly 300 years, bearing witness to the history of Caracas, Venezuela, a vibrant city, haunted by ghosts and emerging as a formidable, 20th-century metropolis.
*In Trouble Again: A Journey Between the Orinoco and the Amazon, by Redmond O'Hanlon (1988). Here's where travel becomes, perhaps, too adventurous: Thrill-seeking, hilarious O'Hanlon takes a four-month river trip and trek in the jungles of Venezuela, a buggy, shadowy, prehistoric-seeming netherworld. The result? An illuminating diary of the jungle's wildlife and people.
The Mighty Orinoco, by Jules Verne (1898). Science fiction guru Verne (Twenty Thousand Leagues Under the Sea) here pens an adventure tale that follows a young man (who is not what he appears) on his quest for his lost father by boat up the wild Orinoco River. This being the jungle, there are quite a few encounters with natives, insects, and infectious diseases.
Swallowing Stones: A Novel, by Lisa St. Aubin de Teran (2005). A sweeping, fictional autobiography of the scholar and Marxist revolutionary Oswaldo Barreto Miliani, this novel ambitiously traipses through 50 years of Latin American politics. The author, who lived in Venezuela, was a longtime friend of her subject, and peppers the narrative with delicious details. From his youth in San Cristobal as an unruly schoolboy to his relationships with the likes of Castro, Allende, and Che, Miliani remains an indelible figure on the landscape of Latin American history.