Mapped
Doña Bárbara
Rómulo Gallegos
The flooded savannah of Apure, where a Caracas lawyer comes home to a cattle ranch on the Arauca and finds a neighbour who has been swallowing his land. The map runs from the provincial capital and seat of law at San Fernando de Apure west across the open llanos to the great river, with the two rival ranches set among the plains between them.
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The Lost Steps
Alejo Carpentier
A disillusioned musicologist, fleeing his hollow modern life, travels to South America and up a great river into the jungle in search of primitive instruments, and finds a world outside time before losing the way back to it. Carpentier maps the real journey up the Orinoco: the Latin American capital of Caracas, the river port of Puerto Ayacucho, the great river climbing into the Guiana highlands, and the deep forest of the tepuis where a settlement seems to exist before history itself.
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