Tales from the Sharp End
256 pages, 5 1/2 x 8 1/2
30 halftones
Paperback
Release Date:15 Sep 2024
ISBN:9780826366627
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Tales from the Sharp End

A Portrait of Chile

University of New Mexico Press

Tales from the Sharp End: A Portrait of Chile is based on fifteen years of Natascha Scott-Stokes living and exploring the country of Chile. The book offers a vivid tapestry of stories ranging from history and culture to flora and fauna, woven into the author’s own tales of adventure and heartbreak.

Chile is 4,300 kilometers long but a mere 350 kilometers at its widest, lined by the Andes to the east and the Pacific to the west. Traveling along the Pan-American Highway takes you to both the driest desert on earth and impenetrable cloud forests barring the way to Patagonian ice fields. Here is the true magnet of this jagged knife-edge of a country: the unique landscape born of its geography and the gorgeous plant and animal life there. Few things are more thrilling than climbing the coastal mountains to see both the Andes and the ocean at the same time, or to set eyes on the mighty River Baker churning through southern Patagonia.

Natascha Scott-Stokes offers both a love letter to Chile and a heartfelt lament for a country living at the sharp end of human folly and climate change.

Tales from the Sharp End is a genuine pleasure to read. If you haven’t yet visited Chile, you will want to after reading this book. Natascha Scott-Stokes has an engagingly personal writing style, and her portrait of Chile is rendered evocatively in a series of unforgettable stories about the nature, people, and history of the land she has come to feel a part of. There is humor and beauty here as well as bittersweetness. In the end, this is Natascha Scott-Stokes’s ode to the place that she has chosen to live in and to love. Reading her, one cannot help but feel that she has given over a part of her soul to Chile, but that—delightfully for us—it has been a reciprocal exchange.”—Jon Lee Anderson, author of Che Guevara: A Revolutionary Life Tales from the Sharp End is a genuine pleasure to read. If you haven’t yet visited Chile, you will want to after reading this book. Natascha Scott-Stokes has an engagingly personal writing style, and her portrait of Chile is rendered evocatively in a series of unforgettable stories abo
“Natascha Scott-Stokes offers readers the rare gift of combining an outsider’s skeptical peek into a foreign land with an insider’s keen grasp of Chile’s cultural quirks and politics, dramatic turning points, and unparalleled landscape. Tales from the Sharp End is a witty, richly colored gaze at Chile from within.”—Pascale Bonnefoy Miralles, author of The Investigative Brigade: Hunting Human Rights Criminals in Post-Pinochet Chile “Natascha Scott-Stokes offers readers the rare gift of combining an outsider’s skeptical peek into a foreign land with an insider’s keen grasp of Chile’s cultural quirks and politics, dramatic turning points, and unparalleled landscape. Tales from the Sharp End is a witty, richly co
“A most welcome addition to the literature on Chile. Natascha Scott-Stokes gives us a broad overview of this remarkable land, weaving together natural history, Spanish explorers and colonizers, and the country’s troubled recent history.”—Mary Helen Spooner, author of The General’s Slow Retreat: Chile after Pinochet “A most welcome addition to the literature on Chile. Natascha Scott-Stokes gives us a broad overview of this remarkable land, weaving together natural history, Spanish explorers and colonizers, and the country’s troubled recent history.”—Mary Helen Spooner, author of The General’s Slow

In 1989 pioneering traveler Natascha Scott-Stokes became the first woman to travel the length of the Amazon River alone. She recounted that journey in her book An Amazon and a Donkey. She lives in Chile.

Acknowledgments

Introduction

Chapter 1. Heart of Darkness: The Conquistador Legacy

Chapter 2. Trails of Discovery

Chapter 3. The Poison Chalice: Women in History

Chapter 4. The Limache Valley

Chapter 5. Riches from the Sea

Chapter 6. The Flowering Desert: The Norte Chico

Chapter 7. 2010 Earthquake

Chapter 8. Sundays with Don Guido

Chapter 9. Rapa Nui (Easter Island)

Chapter 10. Mummies in the Desert: The Norte Grande

Chapter 11. Silence: The Undigested Past

Chapter 12. Gracias a la Vida

Chapter 13. Señora Gilda: Poverty in Person

Chapter 14. In the Land of the Monkey Puzzle Tree

Chapter 15. The Open Wound of the Araucanía

Chapter 16. Araña de Rincon: The Spider in the Corner

Chapter 17. Patagonia

Chapter 18. The Unluckiest Botanist in the World

Chapter 19. September 11

Chapter 20. House of Shame: Domestic Violence

Chapter 21. Robinson Crusoe Island (Juan Fernández Archipelago)

Chapter 22. Chile Rising, or the Estallido Social

Chapter 23. Paradise Valley: Valparaíso

Chapter 24. The Right to Live in Peace

Chapter 25. Crossroads

Chapter 26. Water

Chapter 27. The 2020 Plague Year

Chapter 28. Cambia Todo Cambia: Everything Changes

Postscript

Notes

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