At the Tomb of the Inflatable Pig
  • Published: 1 April 2004
  • ISBN: 9780099416555
  • Imprint: Arrow
  • Format: Paperback
  • Pages: 400
  • RRP: $39.99
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At the Tomb of the Inflatable Pig

Travels through Paraguay

Formats & editions
EBook
31 Aug 2011
Paperback
1 Apr 2004
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In this uniquely written travel book, Daily Telegraph writer John Gimlette takes the reader on a rollercoaster journey through the tumultuous past, and extraordinarily colourful present, of Paraguay.

Paraguay - the name conjures up everything most exotic and extreme in South America. It's a place of hellish jungles, dictators, fraudsters and Nazis, utopian experiments, missionaries and lurid coups. It's not a place for the timid tourist. It doesn't even have its own guidebook. But Paraguay, as revealed in this outstanding new travel book, is among the most beautiful and captivating countries in the world. The beguiling Paraguayans, despised and feared by their neighbours, are unfathomable. They adore Diana, Princess of Wales, as if she were still alive and hundreds volunteered to fight for Britain in the Falklands War. Their politics are Byzantine but when the Vice-President is murdered, they call in Scotland Yard. Discover more about the unique traditions of South American culture through this fascinating piece of travel journalism.
  • Published: 1 April 2004
  • ISBN: 9780099416555
  • Imprint: Arrow
  • Format: Paperback
  • Pages: 400
  • RRP: $39.99
Categories:
Share…

About the author

John Gimlette

John Gimlette is a well-established travel writer, having won the Shiva Naipaul Memorial Prize and the Wanderlust Travel Writing Award. He writes regularly for a number of broadsheets. His first book, At the Tomb of the Inflatable Pig: Travels through Paraguay, was published in 2003 to massive critical acclaim. Theatre of Fish, set in Newfoundland and Labrador, was published in 2005, followed by Panther Soup (2005) and Wild Coast (2012), which takes the reader through Guyana, Suriname, and French Guyana. When not probing the extreme corners of the Earth he practises as a barrister in London.

Also by John Gimlette

Panther Soup
Theatre Of Fish
See all

Praise for At the Tomb of the Inflatable Pig

Full of surprises, this is a riveting read

Sunday Telegraph

Off the wall title, and a great off centre enjoyment, with a smashing, entertaining piece of writing...

Manchester Evening News

A glorious travel book - Edward Marriot

The Sunday Times

John Gimlette's extraordinary book, part history, part travelogue, is so vivid that nobody reading it is ever likely to forget the country. - Max Davidson

Daily Telegraph

A hilarious, informed anti-travelogue . . . with generous detail grounded in the author's personal experiences, this is a travel book of the mind

The Boston Globe

Gimlette knows his subject cold, and it's a subject bound to have something for everyone . . . Charming and vivid. . . crammed full of a wild cast of characters and incredible experiences

San Francisco Chronicle

[Gimlette's] account is so rich in anecdotes, so suffused in color and dialect that we are left with a sense of having somehow inhaled all this Paraguayan history and then experienced it through a nightmare or a dream. Gimlette has given us a cast of characters as vivid as any by Dickens or Waugh

New York Times

Colorful and meandering, by turns hilarious and horrifying, often delightful. . .and very, very odd. . . . An entirely faithful reflection of its subject

New York Times Book Review