Five reads and reasons why you should vacation in Chile
Chile’s books to read before your vacation
Chile offers future travelers great literature to read before you visit. Is it the country and its history that helps this South American nation’s contribution to the best writers and works of literature on the international literary scene?
To find an answer you can read the following five novels set in Chile.
The House of the Spirits by Isabel Allende
In one of the most important and beloved Latin American works of the twentieth century, Isabel Allende weaves a luminous tapestry of three generations of the Trueba family, revealing both triumphs and tragedies.
Daughter of Fortune by Isabel Allende
An orphan, raised in Valparaiso, Chile, by a Victorian spinster and her rigid brother, vivacious young Eliza Sommers follows her lover to California during the Gold Rush of 1849. Entering a rough-and-tumble world of new arrivals driven mad by gold fever, Eliza moves in a society of single men and prostitutes with the help of her good friend and savior, the Chinese doctor Tao Chi’en. California opens the door to a new life of freedom and independence to the young Chilean, and her search for her elusive lover gradually turns into another kind of journey.
The Postman (Il Postino by Antonio Skármeta
The Postman tells of young love ignited by the poetry of Pablo Neruda. Set in the colorful, ebullient years preceding the Pinochet dictatorship in Chile, the book has been translated into nearly twenty-five languages around the world.
Night in Chile by Roberto Bolano
This wild, eerily compact novel―Roberto Bolano’s first work available in English―recounts the tale of a poor boy who wanted to be a poet, but ends up a half-hearted Jesuit priest and a conservative literary critic, a sort of lap dog to the rich and powerful cultural elite, in whose villas he encounters Pablo Neruda and Ernst Junger.
Distant Star by Roberto Bolano
This is a chilling novel about the nightmare of a corrupt and brutal dictatorship.
The star of Roberto Bolano’s hair-raising novel Distant Star is Alberto Ruiz-Tagle, an air force pilot who exploits the 1973 coup to launch his own version of the New Chilean Poetry, a multimedia enterprise involving skywriting, poetry, torture, and photo exhibitions.
Places to visit in Chile
Now, to help answer the question is Chile, the country, the reason for its world-renowned literature, you can plan a visit to the following special places in Chile to decide.
In Chile, You Can Find the Driest Place on Earth, The Atacama Desert
At 7,500 feet, Chile’s Atacama Desert is the driest place on Earth. Some parts of the region have never received a drop of rain and the Desert is probably also the oldest desert on earth.
Chile is a World Class Wine Destination, and the Ninth Largest Producer of Wine
Chile is the 5th largest exporter of wine and the 9th largest producer.
Easter Island
The “Moai” island off the coast of Chile was annexed by the country in 1888 and renamed Easter Island in the late 1700’s.
Valparaiso
This is one of the most prosperous cities in Chile and its main attraction its historical central area, declared a Unesco World Heritage Site in 2003. Also known as “The Garden City,”
World’s Biggest Swimming Pool is in Chile
In Algarrobo city on the Pacific coast, we find the most impressive artificial paradise that was named by the Guinness Book of Records as the world’s largest swimming pool with a length of 1,000 yards, an area of 20 acres and a maximum depth of 115- feet. It holds 66 million gallons of crystal clear seawater.
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