The Damned South

A border fence in the North Mexican desert, a collapsing shed in the inhospitable Patagonian emptiness - and in-between lies the other America, which has long ceased to be what we think it is.

Today, this America is more contradictory, puzzling, brutal, beautiful and bizarre than ever. And a whole generation of authors is busy discovering this continent anew, measuring its width and length and creating a topography of its places and people. The true, prize-winning stories collected in this treasure trove of New Journalism tell us more about this fascinating continent than the strangest fiction ever could: Bolivian women wrestlers and jailed Peruvian lovebirds, the world capital of twins and a donkey librarian in Patagonia, one island poisoned and another created out of garbage - entire worlds illuminated in these strange, deeply affecting, absurd, uplifting stories.