Beyond the Silver River : South American Encounter (New ed)

The author of "The Land That Lost Its Heroes", an award-winning study of Argentina and the Falklands War, embarks on journeys of discovery to the South American countries of Argentina, Chile, Brazil, Peru, Ecuador and Bolivia, relating his adventures with the diverse people who make up this continent. He conducts us by steam train up the Andes and down to the depths of a Bolivian tin mine.

We find a hotbed of Argentine loyalties in Tierra del Fuego, beaches of bodies beautiful in Brazil and Peruvian streets where fanantical Sendero Luminoso guerrillas wage a permanent power struggle with the military. Burns introduces us to Sixto Vazquez, Indian intellectual with an unshakeable faith in legend and animism; to Tina, White Russian Duchess of Platinov, who now presides over a domain of moths in the Ecuadorean rain forest; and to Father Renato Hevia, editor of a Jesuit magazine in Chile who is harassed and detained if he fails to mention Pinochet in every edition. Jimmy Burns is a journalist who works for the "Financial Times".

He is the recipient of the 1988 Somerset Maugham Award for Non-Fiction.