Horizon Information Portal

HSPLS site

eBooks/Audiobooks

Reading Program

Desert memories [electronic resource] : journeys through the Chilean North / Ariel Dorfman.

by Dorfman, Ariel.

View full image

Washington, D.C. : National Geographic, c2004.

Dorfman, Ariel -- Travel -- Chile -- Norte Grande.

Norte Grande (Chile) -- Description and travel.

Electronic Resource

http://hawaii.lib.overdrive.com/ContentDetails.htm?ID=F3801E64-41E0-465E-AE90-0F1371C8B079 This title is available online; click here to access

Electronic Resource

http://excerpts.cdn.overdrive.com/FormatType-410/0111-1/F38/01E/64/DesertMemoriesJourneysThroughtheChile9781426209024.epub

Electronic Resource

https://samples.overdrive.com/?crid=F3801E64-41E0-465E-AE90-0F1371C8B079&.epub-sample.overdrive.com

Electronic Resource

http://images.contentreserve.com/ImageType-100/0111-1/{F3801E64-41E0-465E-AE90-0F1371C8B079}Img100.jpg

9781426209024 (electronic bk.)

1426209029 (electronic bk.)

National Geographic directions.

1 online resource : illustrations, map.

Prologue: Opening in Arica: Circling back -- Origins: Footprint in the south -- Star prospectors -- Cemeteries under the moon -- Ghosts: Nomads of nitrate -- Time for a story -- Mountain of fire -- Under the sand -- Bodies: Preservation blues -- Family secrets -- Finding Freddy -- Epilogue: Footsteps in the north: Arica and beyond -- Acknowledgments, along with a final story.

El Norte Grande of Chile is the world's driest desert, a vast, barren expanse where a person can live an entire lifetime without ever feeling a single drop of rain, where rivers vanish into the sands and trees are all but unknown. But this forbidding landscape has many stories to tell an observant, inquisitive traveler. Someone like Ariel Dorfman. Renowned as a poet, essayist, novelist, and playwright, he combines eloquence, passion, and personal experience with a sure sense of place and a keen eye for the telling detail that brings history to life -- for this account of his journey through the desert is also a chronicle of modern Chile. Like an archaeologist, he sifts through shards of memory to recreate a world that no longer exists but still casts a long shadow over his native land. Ghosts are at the heart of his tale, from the ruined boomtowns where great nitrate fortunes were built to the seaside prison where Dorfman's old friend Freddy Taberna spent his last night before being executed in 1973 after the overthrow of Salvador Allende's government. In these pages, long-abandoned mining communities are summoned up in their glory days, when the mansions of mineral millionaires were built on the punishing labor of workers forever in hock to the company store. Nor are these the only ghosts. In this sweeping book, Dorfman also examines the oldest mummies in the world, visits an observatory at the top of the world that scans the light from long-dead stars, and sifts through the remains of indigenous villages buried under tons of sand. Skillfully interweaving present and past, memoir and meditation, fascinating history and colorful family lore, Desert Memories gazes across the seeming emptiness of el Norte Grande, finds a complete and compelling world, and conjures it up with the kind of elegant simplicity that only the most sophisticated of travelers can achieve.

Horizon Information Portal 3.0

Powered by Dynix

© 2001-2013 SirsiDynix All rights reserved.

Horizon Information Portal