Alive: The Story of the Andes Survivors

by Piers Paul Read

‘I used to be so spoiled,’ Mangino said to him. ‘Being up here makes one realize how dreadful one was before. I used to kick my brother if he annoyed me, or throw away the soup if it wasn’t just right. If only I could have that soup now.’

It would have been possible now to avoid eating such things as rotten lungs and putrid intestines of bodies they had cut up weeks before, but half the boys continued to do so because they had come to need the stronger taste. It had taken a supreme effort of will for these boys to eat human flesh at all, but once they had started and persevered, appetite had come with the eating, for the instinct to survive was a harsh tyrant which demanded not just that they eat their companions but that they get used to doing so.