Patria: Lost Countries of South America

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Blending travel writing, journalism and history, Lost Countries of South America explores how a continent's past is dictating its future, shedding light on themes that are in the spotlight across the globe today- identity, nation and truth. Lost Countries of South America is an adventurous, wide-ranging and original study that blends history, travel writing, and eyewitness narrative to bring the continent's untold past and fascinating present to life. There is a familiar story about South America. The Inca Empire held sway over a mysterious, isolated continent. Then, the guns, germs and steel of Spanish conquistadors wiped out all native resistance overnight. Colonial powers freely plundered its riches. And, after the genius of a few military men won its independence, the region soon fell into conflict and chaos, condemning it to the periphery of the global stage. But this simplistic picture is now being turned upside down. Taking ten supposedly vanished and forgotten South American nations as his waymarks, journalist Laurence Blair travels to each in turn - an intrepid journey on foot and horseback, railway and river - delving into their unexpected histories and long, contested afterlives. From an unbowed Inca enclave in the mountains and sprawling ancient city-states in the Amazon rainforest, via a mighty Patagonian nation of mounted warrior-diplomats that humbled a global superpower, to a fearsome guerrilla nation of runaways that fought slavery in colonial Brazil for a century, the African patriots who marched over the Andes to overthrow an empire, and the radical, recurring dream of a united continent, Blair uncovers unfamiliar stories of complexity and coexistence - as well as resistance, rebellion and revolution. Drawing on rich archival sources, ground-breaking recent scholarship, and stunning archaeological findings, as well as encounters with drug lords, scholars, guerrillas, environmentalists, Indigenous leaders and urban activists, Lost Countries of South America weaves a compelling, fast-paced narrative that speaks to universal themes of memory and national identity, placing an overlooked region at the centre of the history of the world - and its future.

Reviews

Ambitious and far-reaching... integrating research into pre-Columbian remains with the contemporary experience of crossing borders as a sharp-eyed, backpacking witness * Iain Sinclair *
Laurence Blair has invented a completely new genre of literature: magical journalism, at once fantastical and pragmatically droll. It's full of weird wit but also a deep sensitivity to the wounds of national sentiment. It's one of a kind * Simon Schama on 150 Years of Solitude: Bolivia's Dreams of the Sea *
A brilliantly mature intellectual jigsaw puzzle, combining... nationalistic history, with personal anecdote, travel writing and narrative sweep... a hugely ambitious project * Caroline Daniel, Financial Times on 150 Years of Solitude: Bolivia's Dreams of the Sea *

Author Bio

Laurence Blair (b. 1991, Dorset, UK) is a journalist and writer who covers Latin America for outlets including the BBC, The Economist, the Financial Times, the Guardian, National Geographic, and History Today. Over nearly a decade's reporting, he has broken stories about archaeological discoveries in the Atacama Desert and coup attempts in Bolivia and Paraguay; rafted down Amazonian rivers with former rebels in Colombia and flown into drug plantations with special forces; trekked over the Andes with Argentine gauchos into Chile, journeyed to remote islands off the coast of Peru, and walked with Venezuelan refugees into the lawless Darien jungle. He studied Ancient and Modern History at the University of Oxford before moving to South America, where he is currently based out of Asunci n, Paraguay. Winner of the Bodley Head/Financial Times Essay Prize for Dreams of the Sea - his tale of a visit to Bolivia's landlocked navy - and the Royal Society of Literature's Giles St Aubyn Award, Lost Countries is his first book.