Full Circle: A South American Journey (Lonely Planet Journeys) [Paperback]

Luis Sepulveda (Author), Chris Andrews (Translator)

Book Description

Publication Date: October 1996

Part autobiography, part travel memoir, "Full Circle" brings us the distinctive voice of one of South America's most compelling writers. Chilean Sepulveda takes us on a "journey without itinerary", meeting extravagant characters and extraordinary situations, from sleepy tropical towns to the landscapes of legendary Patagonia.

Editorial Reviews

From Library Journal

Sepulveda (The Name of the Bullfighter, LJ 7/96), a novelist exiled from Chile in 1975, opens this personal narrative with the advice of his grandfather to visit his birthplace of Martos, Spain. His life-long journey begins in Temuco, a Chilean prison, where he was a political prisoner for three years. Surprisingly, he does not harbor anger or bitterness from the experience. Later, he is a miserably poor professor in Ecuador and then holds a curiously surreal job writing the memoirs of a wealthy haciendado whose widowed daughter hopes to marry him to her daughter to preserve the family line. His experiences in Patagonia are the most interesting, beginning with his acquaintance with Bruce Chatwin, the Englishman whose book on Patagonia is considered a classic in travel literature. Eventually, he arrives in Martos, where he meets his grandfather's brother and is able to bring his journey "full circle." This book has a decidedly South American tone, seeing magic and wonder where most North Americans do not. Recommended for cosmopolitan travel collections.?Mary Ann Parker, California Dept. of Water Resources Law Lib., Sacramento
Copyright 1997 Reed Business Information, Inc.

Language Notes

Text: English (translation)
Original Language: Spanish

Product Details

• Paperback: 200 pages
• Publisher: Lonely Planet Publications (October 1996)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0864424655
• ISBN-13: 978-0864424655
• Product Dimensions: 7.6 x 5 x 0.5 inches
• Shipping Weight: 7.8 ounces
• Average Customer Review: 4.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (4 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #1,250,926 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

7 of 7 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars A book of the past, present and future, July 8, 1998

By A Customer

This review is from: Full Circle: A South American Journey (Lonely Planet Journeys) (Paperback)

Full circle details the past and the ceratin present of sepulveda's life, his torture and exile from his country because of his belief and his travels through South America as he cannot return. The story begins and ends with his aim to try and get to the village of his grandfather's birth in Spain and to see if he has any surviving relatives. A book that touched me in a way no other book has ever done and none probably will, and belive me, for once that is no understatement.

3 of 3 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars wanderlust reactivated, May 8, 2002

By 

A. Saha "martes" (Brasilia, Brasil) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Full Circle: A South American Journey (Lonely Planet Journeys) (Paperback)

a very honest and coolly written book. While the narrative appears disjointed at first, one realizes that if the author were to write all the details in chrono sequence, given that he has been travelling for years, it would have been several fat volumes. This is not srictly a travelogue in the sense of day 1 we did tis, day 2 that happened.. rather, its a collection of incidents and events that took place in the couirse of the author's travels, that illuminate life in the various places he has been.
I feel like hitting the road again, with no fixed destination in mind, no final goal, timeless...

4 of 11 people found the following review helpful:

2.0 out of 5 stars It was a difficult read..., January 9, 1999

By A Customer

This review is from: Full Circle: A South American Journey (Lonely Planet Journeys) (Paperback)

This book was disjointed. It was really hard to follow what was going on and where the author was going and why. The book seemed to be a compilation of miscellaneous stories about his life. Some of the stories made sense, while others were out of place and unintelligible. This made for a difficult read.