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223rd out of 804 books
—
655 voters
At the Tomb of the Inflatable Pig: Travels Through Paraguay
Haven to Nazis, smugglers’ paradise, home to some of the earth’s oddest wildlife and most baroquely awful dictatorships, Paraguay is a nation waiting for the right chronicler. In John Gimlette, at last it has one. With an adventurer’s sang-froid, a historian’s erudition, and a sense of irony so keen you could cut a finger on it, Gimlette celebrates the beauty, horror and–y...more
Paperback, 400 pages
Published
March 8th 2005
by Vintage
(first published 2003)
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Did not choose this per se, but got it for free. An astoundingly good read for a first book. Gimlette is a natural writer, and the book is a continuous flow of original language and deft, hilarious description. He should write novels and not, as he mostly does, according to his about-the-author blurb, travel-magazine articles He relishes Paraguay's absurd, tragic, bloody, and literally Voltaireanly picaresque history. Makes me want to go to Paraguay, which is saying something, because he also ma...more
This is an excellent travel book, but the journey that you're taken on is not so much through the Paraguay of today but through its immensely interesting and often all too violent past. At the end of this book you'll not come out knowing the best places to eat in Asunción but you will come out with a better understanding of the trials and the wars that helped shape a nation and its national character, as well as a few places of interest. Gimlette helps define the undefinable of what it is to be...more
Overall, something which resembles a morbid curiosity of a land so foreign coupled with Gimlette’s unique and humorous perspective engages the readers. However, the vacillation between history and Gimlette’s personal experiences makes the chronology difficult to follow. While Gimlette’s irreverent humor is usually enjoyable, it becomes off-putting at times. His lack of censorship and in-depth descriptions, especially with regard to the morally bankrupt exploits of government officials, drives so...more
This book is ok. At its core it aspires to be a travelogue and brief history of Paraguay. In the end it doesn't manage to give the reader a good view of modern or historical Paraguay. The people the athor talks with and the areas he visits all belong to the foreign and uppercrust elements of Paraguay. His focus on the most shocking and odd aspects of Paraguay and its history, told with the most shocking and odd explanations and views, does little to paint a realistic picture of the nation or con...more
This book transcends its genre, not because travel-writing is somehow unserious or trite, but because this book transcends genre of any kind. This is remarkable a book as has been written in the last 20 years. It is non-fiction as nightmare. Most incredible of all is that it was John Gimlette’s first book.
At the Tomb of the Inflatable Pig begins like any other humorous travelogue about a country you’ve never visited. Gimlette is witty and dry and prosaic in his opening descriptions of Paraguay:
Y...more
At the Tomb of the Inflatable Pig begins like any other humorous travelogue about a country you’ve never visited. Gimlette is witty and dry and prosaic in his opening descriptions of Paraguay:
Y...more
Paraguay. What to say about Paraguay. According to John Gimlette's part-history, part-travelogue, At the Tomb of the Inflatable Pig, I learned that Paraguay, like America, is a melting pot. A melting pot of expats, Nazis, Mennonites, and cannibals, however. Paraguay is a country with a colorful, and confusing history, that I'm pretty sure not many Paraguayans actually know. I liked this book because I've never read a single thing about Paraguay before. But I didn't like this book for many more r...more
An interesting book, a combination of history and a travel writing. I knew next to nothing about Paraguey....what a totally bizarre place, full of the weirdest characters you can imagine, all in a dissolute semi-tropical setting.
They've got sadistic dictators (historical and modern), an Irish prostitute who became the "Empress" of Paraguey and carted her piano and boatloads of china and shoes after her lover (19th c. dictator), cannibal Indians and Jesuit priests, smuggling, drug lords, poverty,...more
They've got sadistic dictators (historical and modern), an Irish prostitute who became the "Empress" of Paraguey and carted her piano and boatloads of china and shoes after her lover (19th c. dictator), cannibal Indians and Jesuit priests, smuggling, drug lords, poverty,...more
I'll pretty much read anything to do with Paraguay because this little land-locked South American country is so dear to my heart and so obscure to the broader world. John Gimlette has an entertaining writing style, and the book is a quick and easy read, but I reached the end feeling like he had turned Paraguay into a freak show. It was all cannibals and Nazis. Granted, if so many weird things exist in one country, maybe that country is a little weird. Paraguay IS a little weird. But I felt like...more
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Clearly, this is the work of a failed novelist. The first quarter of the book was fragmented and uninteresting. The rest was better, as stories go, but I never learned to like the patchy and chronologically chaotic nature of the book.
I guess the author failed to write a novel about Paraguay, because he couldn't craft a plot that would stay together. For all I know, he can't even hold together a paragraph. Countless times now I've started one with interest, and halfway through the author has lost...more
I guess the author failed to write a novel about Paraguay, because he couldn't craft a plot that would stay together. For all I know, he can't even hold together a paragraph. Countless times now I've started one with interest, and halfway through the author has lost...more
Maybe it's just that I'm not all that interested in Paraguay or maybe it's because I've lost patience after reading a rash of bad books, but I couldn't get through John Gimlette's "At the Tomb of the Inflatable Pig."
The book, part travelogue, part history lesson had interesting tidbits here and there (actually only one interesting tidbit about the dictator who pushed his opponents out of planes for sport) but it didn't feel cohesive and wasn't all that interesting to me.
The book, part travelogue, part history lesson had interesting tidbits here and there (actually only one interesting tidbit about the dictator who pushed his opponents out of planes for sport) but it didn't feel cohesive and wasn't all that interesting to me.
I know close to nothing about Paraguay and would really like to enjoy this book and learn something in the process. It just isn't happening. It is rare that I start a book and don't finish it but this is one of those rarities for me. It is written in a fine fashion but just doesn't grab me. And it really doesn't take much in an nonfiction book to grab me - I am a sucker. But not for inflatable pigs I guess.
one of my all-time favorites. granted, it's because i think it's a funny, extremely-well researched and detailed, sometimes painful and always fascinating account of one of my favorite places on earth--Paraguay. i love Paraguay for being such an enigma and Gimlette's book shows it so well. it's part travel journal, part historical review, part social-political reflexion on a country that has long been "and island of land" isolated from all its neighbors, virtually impenetrable in so many physica...more
Sep 01, 2012
Ileen
rated it
4 of 5 stars
·
review of another edition
Shelves:
2009,
scrittori-inglesi
Un viaggio avventuroso nell'isolamento del Paraguay, isola circondata dalla terraferma, fatto (e rifatto) dal Londiense Gimlette. Gli excursus sono tantissimi (da Lopez a Stroessner).
Basta guardare o toccare un oggetto per essere catapultati indietro nel tempo. Bellissimo!
Basta guardare o toccare un oggetto per essere catapultati indietro nel tempo. Bellissimo!
What to say about this book? It is a strange combination of history and travel journal set in Paraguay. It was never really clear to me why the author wrote this book, and perhaps this is where my confusion about it lies. Although I enjoyed the fact that it was all about Paraguay (how many books are?!), I didn't feel like it was a captivating enough to be of interest to someone who had never been there nor in depth enough to be enchanting to someone who knows the country really well. However, th...more
This book made me want to travel to Paraguay because it is a wacky place and no one travels there. Their history is too similar to a circus, it's hard to imagine that these dictators are actually real political figures and "ran" a country.
The only book I have been able to find on Paraguay now I know my daughter Sandra is going to live there for a year– interesting but a little worrying due to the amount of unrest, but written by someone who obviously loves the country.
a tour of history,travel and personal insight,gimlette weaves a wonderful tale of greed,despotism,and the travails of paraguay.a mesmerising read.loved it.
Probably the most interesting book about Paraguay you'll ever read. If you know nothing about this country, read this and then you won't have to go.
The title cried to be read. It said it would be humorous. I didn't find it so. I made it past 20 pages or so. I got this from the library as a discard since noone read it. I can see why now.
One of the strangest of the many books by travel writers I have read. Who ever thought I'd want to visit Paraguay! Highly recommended and a great escape.
May 14, 2012
Lindsay
added it
Not. Interesting.
Sins of the fathers
Generations of pain and suffering come to life in Gimlette's book. How could such bad leadership plague a single nation across not just decades but centuries? This book doesn't provide an answer, but it does tell a morality tale of how bad government breeds bad government and how once expectations are set low, they tend to stay there. I hope the current flux of politics in Paraguay produces a leader who breaks the cycle. If ever a nation needed saving, this one does.
Generations of pain and suffering come to life in Gimlette's book. How could such bad leadership plague a single nation across not just decades but centuries? This book doesn't provide an answer, but it does tell a morality tale of how bad government breeds bad government and how once expectations are set low, they tend to stay there. I hope the current flux of politics in Paraguay produces a leader who breaks the cycle. If ever a nation needed saving, this one does.
Fascinating travel book that discusses history while the author travels around a country that most people have never heard of, let alone visited. Can perhaps come accross as a bit negative in its persistant descriptions of Paraguay as a lawless wild west. Of course that might be just how life really is there, but I felt that there was perhaps a bit too much focussed on that aspect. Gets my vote especially as Gimlette's descriptions of Graham Greene turned me into a great fan of Greene's works.
So excellent. Makes me want to run away to Paraguay right now.
Oct 02, 2008
Kani
rated it
4 of 5 stars
Recommends it for:
travel,southamerican,dictators
Recommended to Kani by:
my daughter
i learned a lot about paraguay, some of which i wish i didn't know since my daughter is now there with the peace corps! although he spends a lot of time on the history (much of it painful and totalitarian, militaristic and savage), he doesn't spend a whole lot of attention on the beauty. he mentions it but it is downplayed, or, between the lines. so it was interesting, sometimes even funny, but it was also really sad.
A perfect marriage of author's writing style and subject matter. Preposterous, absurd stories that would be completely incredible if they were fiction.
I enjoy his writing but this is incorrectly titled. This is a sarcastic look at Paraguayan political history. The 'locals' Gimlette has relied on for his vignettes are either ex-pats, the Paraguayan elite, or people who live in Ascuncion (Paraguay's capital and largest city).
Besides, after about 100 pages the joke gets old...
Besides, after about 100 pages the joke gets old...
A rambling, kooky travel report from Paraguay with snippets of history and social commentary. This book provides an excellent representation of the spirit of Paraguay - a jumble of shady characters, dark historical secrets, travel misadventures, and a joyful people who recognize the value of laughter in coping with it all.
Not much of a book to read straight throw as there is no underlying story .... but it is rich in the odd, and fanciful histories and nuances of Paraguay. I learned a lot, and enjoyed it while I was reading, .... but this book is most definitely NOT a quick read. More of a patchy compilation of travel/history stories.
A quirky history/travelogue about this very screwed up country which seems to always get it wrong. Hard to believe that a country could survive so many wars, so many dictators and so many Nazis, but this book takes you along for the roller coaster ride which is Paraguay. A very good book.
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