Patagonia Revisited

About this book

Since its discovery by Magellan in 1520 Patagonia was known as a country of black fogs and whirlwinds at the end of the inhabited world. It immediately lodged itself in the imagination as a metaphor for "the ultimate" the point beyond which one could not go. In this book Chatwin and Theroux join forces to explores the instances in which the "final capes of exile" have affected the literary imagination and to track down some of the extraordinary travellers past and present from W.H. Hudson to Captain Joshua Slocum and Butch Cassidy. Paul Theroux has won the Whitbread Literary Award. This book had its origins in an entertainment the writers gave for The Royal Geographical Society at a time when Theroux was following Chatwins "In Patagonia" with "The Old Patagonian Express".