At the Tomb of the Inflatable Pig: Travels through Paraguay - Softcover

Gimlette, John

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0099416557 ISBN 13: 9780099416555

Publisher: Arrow, 2004

Synopsis

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.

About this title

Review:

At the Tomb of the Inflatable Pig chronicles the history of Paraguay from the discovery and conquest of the primitive tribes in the seventeenth century to the string of tin pot dictators who have dominated the country ever since. John Gimlette first visited Paraguay as the Falklands war erupted. He's been back several times since and writes with affection, bewilderment and a wry humour about this most bizarre, bloodthirsty and fascinating of countries.

It's a tale of unbelievable corruption and cruelty, idealism and ignorance. European Jesuits converted the cannibals and set up Arcadian communes only to have them crushed by their own rapacious countrymen. German Anabaptists escaped to Paraguay to set up religious communes while other Germans washed up in Paraguay and ended up supporting Hitler and sheltering Nazi criminals after the war.

Gimlette records it all with verve, precision and a rollicking sense of timing. He has presented us with a page-turner of a travel book that mixes culture and criminality, decadence and despair with a bizarre flair that must approximate the country itself. --Dwight Longenecker

Review:

"A glorious travel book - Edward Marriot" (The Sunday Times)

"[Gimlette's] account is so rich in anecdotes, so suffused in color and dialect that we are left with a sense of having somehow inhaled all this Paraguayan history and then experienced it through a nightmare or a dream. Gimlette has given us a cast of characters as vivid as any by Dickens or Waugh" (New York Times)

"Full of surprises, this is a riveting read" (Sunday Telegraph)

"Off the wall title, and a great off centre enjoyment, with a smashing, entertaining piece of writing..." (Manchester Evening News)

"John Gimlette's extraordinary book, part history, part travelogue, is so vivid that nobody reading it is ever likely to forget the country. - Max Davidson" (Daily Telegraph)

About this edition

• Publisher: Arrow
• Publication date: 2004
• ISBN 10: 0099416557
• ISBN 13: 9780099416555
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 400