By Sara Wheeler, author of Terra Incognita: Travels in Antarctica, this is an account of a journey from end to end of Chile's territory, through the extremes of deserts, mountains and Antarctic wastelands. (Chile is a bizarre place, twenty five times longer than it is wide, a sliver of the map that encompasses a huge range of territory and political history.) Wheeler's writing is very restrained, and anecdotal, quirky without playing for laughs, and slightly frustrating: she dips into a fascinating topic, thaen runs away from it before the paragraph is over.
She's a good travel writer in that she makes you long to visit the country, rather than relying on her account for the full story.
First published in the UK in 1994.