The twenty stories in Chile: A Traveler's Literary Companion -- most of which are available here for the first time in English—reveal that the nation that gave birth to two poets who won Nobel prizes in literature is also the home of many world-class prose writers. This collection evokes the diversity of the country’s landscape and the complexity of its recent history.

Katherine Silver is a freelance translator, editor, teacher, and writer who has lived in Chile frequently and for long periods from 1979 to the present. She has translated the works of Antonio Skármeta (The Postman), Elena Poniatowska, José Emilio Pacheco, and Martín Adán. She has also translated Pedro Lemebel’s The Queen of the Corner for Grove/Atlantic Press.

Whereabouts Press is an independent publisher of books that convey a sense of a place—a country, a region, a city—through stories. Unlike guidebooks written by professional travel writers, Travelers Literary Companions feature stories written by literary writers—all of whom are native to the places they write about. They didn’t write specifically for travelers. They wrote because they had good stories to tell. And their stories tell us not just about people, but about the soul of a place.