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Amazon.co.uk Review
It's a tale of unbelievable corruption and cruelty, idealism and ignorance. European Jesuits converted the cannibals and set up Arcadian communes only to have them crushed by their own rapacious countrymen. German Anabaptists escaped to Paraguay to set up religious communes while other Germans washed up in Paraguay and ended up supporting Hitler and sheltering Nazi criminals after the war.
Gimlette records it all with verve, precision and a rollicking sense of timing. He has presented us with a page-turner of a travel book that mixes culture and criminality, decadence and despair with a bizarre flair that must approximate the country itself. --Dwight Longenecker --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.
Review
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"[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.""-- The New York Times
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"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"
"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"
"Blends travelogue, history and flights of descriptive whimsy to hig
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This is history, travelogue, fable, revelation, paean, natural history, expose and autobiography all rolled in to one, and if that sounds like a bizarre and complicated mix, it's nothing compared with the confused jumble that is Paraguay itself. In other words, it is exactly the book this wonderful, mysterious country deserves.
Ask yourself: what do you know about Paraguay? Chances are - next to nothing. In Britain we hear no news, learn no history, meet no Paraguayans. There's an awful lot to hear, especially in the tormented, war-ravaged history of one vicious dictator after another, one bloody war after another, one disappointment after another.
The author takes us on a tour of this history as he travels round the country (capturing the difficulties and vagaries of that travel very well). A nice conceit, and in doing so he covers the major episodes -- the Jesuit missions, El Supremo, the mightily mad Lopez family (and the exquisitely bonkers Eliza Lynch), immigrants in futile search of paradise, be it socialist or National Socialist -- alongside the amazing colour of present-day Paraguay. There are plenty of pen portraits, not only of historical figures great and small but with the many faces of modern Paraguay - the 'lost tribes', descendants of English, German, Australian and other immigrants who hark back to 'homelands' they've never seen and who have forgotten them. The Guarani spirit within all Paraguayans, not to mention the Guarani blood, which sets them apart from their modern neighbours.
Rather like London buses, you wait for years for a book on Paraguay, then three come along at once. (The other two are biographies of Eliza Lynch; this book offers plenty on her but puts it in historical and geographical context, and it's funny, so this book gets my vote).
Criticisms? There could have been proportionally less of Lopez'n'Lynch, entertaining as they were, more on the Chaco War (seemingly tacked on at the end) and Stroessner (all too brief opening passages).
Less of the Asuncion in-crowd, the stranger elements of whom take the author endearingly to heart, and more on the great majority of the country's population, who live in degrees of squalor, dirt and despair in and around the capital.
More than a sentence on Chilavert and the football team. As much as any of the countries of the Souuthern Cone, Paraguay and it's people play out their international lives through the national team. Gimlette rightly highlights Chilavert's presidential ambitions, but leaves us hanging and unaware of just how possible this is. Heaven help us if the Beckhams decide to stand for election!
And surely we can cope with names in the (original) Spanish - El Supremo or Ciudad del Este require little or no translation and are more evocative and, frankly, more accurate. Translations from Guarani are far more welcome.
But don't listen to my slight criticisms. Just buy the book and promise me you will visit the country... while keeping it our little secret how beautiful it and the people are. We don't want it over-run with tourists, do we?
Here a country is brought to life and you begin to get a feeling about what it is like to live there today and during the times of the Generals.
The Paraguay of John Gimlette is a country undergoing change, rapid change, and much of it for the good, but this book also captures something of the past which should not be forgotten.
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