Contemporary Travel Writing of Latin America

Contemporary Travel Writing of Latin America is a well-situated study in the field of travel writing criticism, although it departs from the field’s more established topics of interest, such as the relationship between travel and empire, or the significance of nineteenth-century travel narratives for nation-building projects. Rather, it focuses exclusively on the accounts of contemporary, and for the most part non-canonical, writers from Latin America itself. Lindsay makes explicit that her object of study will be their nonfictional travel narratives and ethnographical texts. The book is innovative in its material, and brilliantly examines the main trends in this type of studies along with its major critics, such as Edward Said, James Clifford, and Mary Louise Pratt. And while the author does not identify her work with the ‘‘particular strains’’ of Latin Americanism or subalternism, she cites Francine Masiello, Gareth Williams, and Mabel Moraña. The book begins with an exploration of the ways in which Luis Sepúlveda and Mempo Giardinelli rewrite Patagonia in Patagonia Express (1995) and Final de novela en Patagonia (2000), respectively. Both writers deal with perennial, mythical images of an empty and end-of-the-world Patagonia, forged in the long tradition of travelers to the region, from Magellan to Chatwin. Sepúlveda and Giardinelli negotiate their own reinscription of this landscape, which is highly charged with symbolism in both the metropolitan and national imagination. According to Lindsay, Sepúlveda and Giardinelli recreate Patagonia as a Foucaultian heterotopic space in crisis.