PATRIA

An adventurous dazzling and original history that brings South America s epic past and fascinating present to life Romantic adventurous and thrilling remarkable Telegraph Vivid fast paced and wonderfully ambitious Patria teems with alternative stories of a continent s life and peoples New InternationalistPatria tells an alternative history of South America spanning thousands of miles and five centuries to the present Looking beyond modern borders Laurence Blair takes as his waymarks nine countries that can t be found on a map vanished realms half imagined utopias and dismembered homelands Blair s journey ranges from ancient Amazonian city states and a rebel Inca dynasty in the jungle via a Brazilian Wakanda that defied slavery Bolivia s landlocked navy and the Patagonian power that defeated the Spanish to fall in with the African freedom fighters who marched over the Andes and the New World Napoleon who led Paraguay to its ruin Groundbreaking recent scholarship striking archaeological discoveries and vivid eyewitness reporting including encounters with drug lords Indigenous leaders refugees and former guerrillas weave a story of survival resistance and revolution restoring South America to the centre of world history An unputdownable