Patria

An adventurous, dazzling and original history that brings South America’s epic past and fascinating present to life

** A FINANCIAL TIMES BEST BOOK OF 2024 **

'Romantic, adventurous and thrilling ... remarkable' Telegraph

‘A work of scholarship [and] descriptive flair’ Oliver Balch, Spectator

Patria 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 delight' JON LEE ANDERSON

'Constantly surprising and always enticing' HARRIET RIX