In this uniquely written travel book, Daily Telegraph writer John Gimlette takes the reader on a rollercoaster journey through the tumultuous past, and extraordinarily colourful present, of Paraguay.
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 tourist. It doesn't even have its own guidebook. But Paraguay, as revealed in this outstanding new travel 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 Diana, Princess of Wales, as if she were still alive and hundreds volunteered to fight for Britain in the Falklands War. Their politics are Byzantine but when the Vice-President is murdered, they call in Scotland Yard. Discover more about the unique traditions of South American culture through this fascinating piece of travel journalism.
John Gimlette is a well-established travel writer, having won the Shiva Naipaul Memorial Prize and the Wanderlust Travel Writing Award. He writes regularly for a number of broadsheets. His first book, At the Tomb of the Inflatable Pig: Travels through Paraguay, was published in 2003 to massive critical acclaim. Theatre of Fish, set in Newfoundland and Labrador, was published in 2005, followed by Panther Soup (2005) and Wild Coast (2012), which takes the reader through Guyana, Suriname, and French Guyana. When not probing the extreme corners of the Earth he practises as a barrister in London.