The South American Diaries

While writing a novel set in South America, John Hopkins travelled back there to "reacquaint himself with the scene". In 1972-3, he travelled by train, bus and boat from Mexico City to the centre of the continent, through Belize, Guatemala and Nicaragua and on to Brazil, Peru, Bolivia, Paraguay and Argentina. Hopkins travelled slowly, deliberately, savouring every experience along the way. But the journey was fraught with his angst-ridden strivings to write his novel and with the troubled love he had for Madeleine, his travelling companion. In these heat-scorched, tequila-infused pages, Hopkins paints a sultry, exquisite portrait of South America and in so doing masters an art that he believed would forever elude him.

Auteur

John Hopkins was a writer who, after graduating from Princeton, lived for many years in Tangier and was a central figure in the bohemian literary crowd of the '60s and '70s, becoming friends with William Burroughs, Paul Bowles and Jane Bowles. He wrote several novels, among them Tangier Buzzless Flies and The Flight of the Pelican, and travel memoirs including The Tangier Diaries, The South American Diaries and The White Nile Diaries.