Cruz del Sur : Tres vidas verdaderas e improbables

“Three True and Improbable Lives,” reads the subtitle of this book. And it’s true: the three lives recounted here belong to people who existed, but whose adventures seem unbelievable. Claudio Magris rescues the stories of three individuals who decided to go to the ends of the earth, perhaps fleeing from themselves, and there reinvented themselves and found meaning in their lives. All three set off for Patagonia and Araucanía. Janez Benigar, a Slovenian anthropologist and linguist, arrived there in search of remote languages, married Sheypukíñ, a Mapuche woman, and dreamed of utopian communities. Orélie-Antoine de Tounens, a French lawyer with a tendency toward delusion, proclaimed himself king of Araucanía and led a fight for freedom. And Angela Vallese, a Piedmontese nun, sacrificed herself for the persecuted indigenous peoples of Tierra del Fuego. Three destinies marked by eccentricity, adventure, heroism, and generosity. Three individuals who defied convention and ventured to remote regions, with breathtakingly beautiful landscapes and situations of oppression and injustice. Three foreigners who ended up defending the land they had made their adopted homeland and its inhabitants.