Chile Rediscovered — Vincent Cronin

A geologist, a microbiologist and a town planner take a journey into the strange regions of Chile s secret heart. They are exposed to astonishing landscapes and species, and encounter a variety of Chile s indigenous inhabitants. They are, respectively, a Chilean ex-fugitive from the Pinochet regime, a Frenchman, and an Englishman, who represents Cronin and reproduces the author s Chilean journey in a semi-fictionalized form. The beliefs and inner convictions of each, and their professional backgrounds, bear upon them as they interpret what they encounter in the scarcely habitable Patagonian islands and mainland of the south and the remote northern altiplano of the Aymaric heartland, thousands of feet above sea level, shrouded in millennia-old secrets. The three are friends, yet differ deeply in what they read into their rediscovery of one of the world s strangest countries.