ROBERT CARVER
Paradise with Serpents
TRAVELS IN THE LOST WORLD
OF PARAGUAY
William Collins
An imprint of HarperCollinsPublishers 1 London Bridge Street London SE1 9GF
Published by Harper Perennial 2007
Copyright © Robert Carver 2007
Map © HarperCollinsPublishers, designed by HL Studios, Oxfordshire
Robert Carver asserts the moral right to be identified as the author of this work
A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library
All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. By payment of the required fees, you have been granted the nonexclusive, nontransferable right to access and read the text of this ebook on screen. No part of this text may be reproduced, transmitted, downloaded, decompiled, reverse engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of HarperCollins e-books.
Source ISBN: 9780002570961
Ebook Edition © FEBRUARY 2016 ISBN 9780007370351
Version: 2016-01-12
HarperCollinsPublishers has made every reasonable effort to ensure that any picture content and written content in this ebook has been included or removed in accordance with the contractual and technological constraints in operation at the time of publication.
From the reviews of The Accursed Mountains:
‘A memorable debut. Robert Carver has fulfilled the dream of every travel writer to find somewhere strange, remote and unvisited, and to pin it to the printed page. The Accursed Mountains is a tale at once endlessly diverting and profoundly tragic’
WILLIAM DALRYMPLE
‘One of the most exciting travel books for a generation’
Spectator
‘A classic’
JUSTIN CARTWRIGHT, Books of the Year, Observer
‘A dazzling account of a journey – always bizarre, often comic, and increasingly nightmarish – through one of the most dangerous backwaters currently to be found anywhere’
PETER HOPKIRK
‘A splendid account of a courageous journey’
DERVLA MURPHY
‘Required reading’
PATRICK LEIGH FERMOR
‘Enviable writing skills … fresh horrors on every page’
JUSTIN WINTLE, The Times
‘A gripping account of Albania in the 1990s’
JAMES OWEN, Daily Telegraph
Dedicated toSt Antony of Padua
Patron Saint of Hopeless Causes
Unhappy is the nation in need of heroes
Bertolt Brecht
Cada uno hace su propia aventura Everyone makes his own fortune
Miguel Cervantes de Vedra
Contents
4 Du Côté de Chez Madame Lynch
5 Paraguay, Champion of America
7 The Gigantic Province of the Indies
13 The Book of Complaint and Enticement