This travel book combines autobiography, biography, literary and political history about the author's search for the truth about his close Chilean friend, the writer and politcal activist Christian Huneeus. The author travelled to Chile to investigate the true life and times of this extraordinary figure, who embodied all the contradictions of the volatile Latin American spirit. At once a womanizer and hedonist as well as a committed political agitator, Christian lived a remarkable life in a country where politics is a matter of life and death. Through his story, Gould tells his own story and discovers that, though worlds apart, England and Chile's development over the years has startling parallels.