Squeezed between a vast ocean and the longest mountain range on earth, Chile is 2,600 miles long and never more than 110 miles wide--not a country that lends itself to maps, as Sara Wheeler discovered when she traveled alone from the top to the bottom, from the driest desert in the world to the sepulchral wastes of Antarctica. Eloquent, astute, nimble with history and deftly amusing, Travels in a Thin Country established Sara Wheeler as one of the very best travel writers in the world.

Squeezed in between a vast ocean and the longest mountain range on earth, Chile is 2,600 miles long and never more than 110 miles wide - not a country which lends itself to maps, as Sara Wheeler found out when she travelled alone with two carpetbags from the top to the bottom, form the driest desert in the world to the sepulchral wastes of Antarctica. This is Sara Wheeler's account of a six-month odyssey which included Christmas Day at 13,000 feet with a llama sandwich, a sex hotel in Santiago and a trip round Cape Horn delivering a coffin. Eloquent, astute and amusing, CHILE: TRAVELS IN A THIN COUNTRY confirms Sara Wheeler's place in the front rank of today's travel writers.

It is the coldest, windiest, driest place on earth, an icy desert of unearthly beauty and stubborn impenetrability. For centuries, Antarctica has captured the imagination of our greatest scientists and explorers, lingering in the spirit long after their return. Shackleton called it "the last great journey"; for Apsley Cherry-Garrard it was the worst journey in the world. This is a book about the call of the wild and the response of the spirit to a country that exists perhaps most vividly in the mind. Sara Wheeler spent seven months in Antarctica, living with its scientists and dreamers. No book is more true to the spirit of that continent--beguiling, enchanted and vast beyond the furthest reaches of our imagination. Chosen by Beryl Bainbridge and John Major as one of the best books of the year, recommended by the editors of Entertainment Weekly and the Chicago Tribune, one of the Seattle Times's top ten travel books of the year, Terra Incognita is a classic of polar literature.

A wonderfully original book about contemporary Russia as seen on journeys in search of Pushkin, Tolstoy, Lermontov, Chekhov, Gogol and Turgenev. SHORTLISTED FOR THE EDWARD STANDFORD TRAVEL WRITING AWARD 2020 With the writers of the Golden Age as her guides – Pushkin, Tolstoy, Gogol and Turgenev, among others – Wheeler travels the length and breadth of Russia to make connections between then and now. On the Trans-Siberian railway, at sail on the Black Sea, or while watching television with her hosts in Soviet apartment blocks, Wheeler searches for a Russia not in the news – a Russia of humanity and daily struggles. At a time of deteriorating relations between Russia and the West, Wheeler gives a voice to the 'ordinary' people of Russia and discovers how the writers of the past continue to represent their country today.

Traverse Chile's diverse literary and geographic landscape with its best contemporary writers. Arranged geographically, these 20 stories-many of which appear in English for the first time-guide the reader through Chile's unique regions. Let Ariel Dorfman take you to Santiago with a prodigal son, discovering his own country for the first time; travel to the remote south with Enrique Valdes; and enjoy the charms of Valparaiso with Pablo Neruda, one of Chile's two Nobel Prize winners. With the return of democracy to Chile, large numbers of Americans and Chilean expatriates are rediscovering the rich cultural allure of Chile, as well as the draw of its unrivaled ecodiversity. Chile is an excellent literary guide for globetrotters and armchair travelers alike-for those new to Chile as well as those familiar with its charms. Katherine Silver is a freelance translator, editor, teacher and writer who has lived in Chile frequently and for prolonged periods from 1979 to the present. She has translated the Il Postino by Antonio Skarmeta, as well as the works of Elena Poniatowska, Jose Emilio Pacheco and Martin Adan. She is currently translating Pedro Lemebel's I Tremble Toreador for Grove/Atlantic Press.

The Norte Grande of Chile, the world's driest desert, had ''engendered contemporary Chile, everything that was good about it, everything that was dreadful,'' writes Ariel Dorfman in his brilliant exploration of one of the least known and most exotic corners of the globe. For 10,000 years the desert had been mined for silver, iron, and copper, but it was the 19th-century discovery of nitrate that transformed the country into a modern state and forced the desert's colonization. The mines' riches generated mansions and oligarchs in Chile's more temperate region—and terrible inequalities throughout the country. The Norte Grande also gave birth to the first Chilean democratic and socialist movements, nurturing every major political figure of modern Chile from Salvador Allende to Augusto Pinochet. In this richly layered personal memoir, illustrated with the author's own photographs, Dorfman sets out to explore the origins of contemporary Chile—and, along the way, seek out his wife's European ancestors who came years ago to Chile as part of the nitrate rush. And, most poignantly, he looks for traces of his friend and fellow 1960s activist, Freddy Taberna, executed by a firing squad in a remote Pinochet death camp.