“Patagonia is too far from simple desires, and distances hurt only when they are associated with memories.”
Airports have the characteristic of being the busiest places in the world. Silent remote cathedrals as crowded as full of dispersed solitude, in which it is normal to feel alone.
This is also what happens to the author of the book, during a trip from Europe to his Latin America. Invaded by the passing boredom of being boarded on the flight, Sepulveda lets himself be kidnapped by a state of numbness of reason, and finds refuge in the memory of distant times, believed to have vanished forever in time and space.
From here begins the story of his passage from the shadow line to adulthood, marked by another journey with the same destination: the world at the end of the world.
An exciting adventure where unconsciousness is the master. The joy, fear, hunger for the world typical of the sixteen years had led him to round the Strait of Magellan and embark on a whaler, the Evangelist, in search of his way into the world.
It will be a journalistic investigation on a new whaler to force him to return home, to make a concrete contribution to safeguarding the environment. Before his eyes, expanses of hidden truth and utilitarian cynicism will open up to the point of almost endangering his life.
At the perfect end of the journey to the end of the world, the last pages collect a basket of hope and good intentions. The possibility of an unexpected better future thanks to people who fight for the common good. An apparently archaic concept, but capable of still stirring the consciences of those who manage to go beyond partisan interests, especially if the part is the whole.
More than thirty years after the first edition, the book remains of devastating relevance, a starting point for respecting a world that was given to us on loan before leaving it to the next generations. The final reflection on nature is moving.
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Luis Sepúlveda, The World at the end of the World, Milano, 2006
Original Edition: Mundo del fin del mundo, 1989
