An adventurous, dazzling and original continent-sized history that brings South America''s epic past and fascinating present to life ''An unputdownable delight'' JON LEE ANDERSON ''A magnificent contribution to the Latin American canon'' MARIE ARANA ''Erudite, pacy and brilliant'' SOPHY ROBERTS ''Constantly surprising and always enticing'' HARRIET RIX Patria tells an alternative history of South America, spanning thousands of miles and five centuries to the present. Looking beyond modern borders, Laurence Blair takes as his waymarks nine countries that can''t be found on a map: vanished realms, half-imagined utopias and dismembered homelands. Blair''s journey ranges from ancient Amazonian city-states and a rebel Inca dynasty in the jungle - via a Brazilian Wakanda that defied slavery, Bolivia''s landlocked navy, and the Patagonian power that defeated the Spanish - to fall in with the African freedom fighters who marched over the Andes, and the New World Napoleon who led Paraguay to its ruin. Groundbreaking recent scholarship, striking archaeological discoveries and vivid eyewitness reporting - including encounters with drug lords, Indigenous leaders, refugees and former guerrillas - weave a story of survival, resistance and revolution, restoring South America to the centre of world history.

Autorentext

Laurence Blair is an award-winning writer and journalist. He was born and raised in Dorset, southwest England, and studied Ancient and Modern History at the University of Oxford. Since 2014, he has reported from across Latin America for outlets including the BBC, Economist, Financial Times, Guardian, New York Times and National Geographic. He currently lives in Asunción, Paraguay.

Klappentext

An extraordinary adventure into South America's epic history

'Absolutely wonderful' DOMINIC SANDBROOK
'A luscious, erudite romp ... a tour de force of literary mezcla' ALICE ALBINIA
'An unputdownable delight' JON LEE ANDERSON
'A magnificent contribution to the Latin American canon' MARIE ARANA

Winner of the Royal Society of Literature Giles St Aubyn Award

In this sweeping exploration of the continent's forgotten past, Laurence Blair takes as his waymarks nine countries that can't be found on a map: vanished realms, half-imagined utopias and dismembered homelands. Looking beyond modern borders, he travels to each in turn - on foot and horseback, by rail and river - to weave an epic of survival, resistance and revolution.

Blair's journey spans five centuries and thousands of miles, ranging from ancient Amazonian civilisations and a rebel Inca dynasty in the Peruvian jungle - via a Brazilian Wakanda that defied slavery, Bolivia's landlocked navy and the Patagonian power that defeated the Spanish Empire - to the African freedom fighters who marched over the Andes from Argentina, and the Napoleon of the New World who led Paraguay to its ruin.

This is the story of South America as is rarely told: at the epicentre of global history and the forging of the modern world.