Passage through El Doradp

Jonathan Kandell

Published by Abacus, softcover

Imagine the drama of the old American West moved to a far more exotic setting today, and you will have an idea of this wonderful book. Jonathan Kandell explores the opening of South America's heartland and finds the cruelty and heroism of the frontier, the physical beauty and the menace. Here are men of vision, plunderers, brutalised Indians. And here is a natural world of lush hostility: rain, tarantulas, piranhas. The political stereotypes that most of us have of South America are swept away by this riveting picture of the romantic reality' New York Times

`A superb book, a gripping tale... told with great narrative skill... It imparts the excitement of being there amongst the tarantulas, the Indian rituals, the rain forests, the oil camps and the drug traffickers. At the same time, it tells us what we need to know about a region that casts a growing shadow across the future...' Washington Post

`This book will be an eye-opener for those who imagine South America only as a continent of military oligarchs, poverty and social surrealism. Jonathan Kandell has vividly mapped the outlines of the world's last great Promised Land as it emerges fitfully into the late twentieth century' Time