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Books & Articles
 A large number of books and articles have been written about President Hugo Chavez and the current politics of Venezuela. Therefore we will not
try to list them all here and will instead use this section to mention some novels which have been influenced by the area where
Aldeas de Paz volunteers
live and work.
 Doña Bárbara is a famous and hugely successful story written by arguably the most important Venezuelan author, Rómulo Gallegos. Dealing with
life in the Sabana (the book is set in the state of Apure which
neighbors the state of Bolivar where Aldeas de Paz is located), the book has twice been made into
a movie. Santos Luzardo, a young lawyer, returns to the home of his family in the Sabana and is forced to deal with the cunning and cruel Doña Bárbara.
The Lost World
is the most famous book influenced by La Gran Sabana
.........Nests of pterodactyls, hordes of iguanodons and swarms of
plesiosaurs still roaming the earth in the Twentieth Century?
Academic-explorer professor Challenger says "Yes!" and to prove it,
leads an expedition into the deepest jungles of South America.
Together, the men - a young journalist, an adventurer, and an
aristocrat - along with their bearers and guides, search for the
rumored lost world and encounter hardship and betrayal on
the way. But things go from bad to worse as they approach
the hidden world they seek. Trapped on an isolated plateau,
menaced
by hungry dinosaurs, it begins to look as though the expedition may
never return from...... the Lost World!!
The German explorer Richard Schomburg was the first European to
see Mount Roraima in 1838. Various Europeans then attempted
to scale it, until the British botanists Eberhard v. Thurn and Harry
Perkins reached the summit in 1884 and discovered that much of the
plant and animal life on top of the Tepuy was unique, as a result of
millions of years of isolation; like an Island removed from the world below.
The news captivated the imagination of Sir Arthur Conan Doyle (the
author of Sherlock Holmes), and the explorers report inspired
him to write The Lost World, in which dinosaurs are still
living on an isolated plateau in the Amazon Basin.
More on Tours
Los Pasos Perdidos (The Lost Steps)
was written by the Cuban author Alejo Carpentier. He wrote several of his stories while traveling through and around Santa Elena de Uairén. Troubled by the dependence on new technology in his day, and by the laziness that he saw modern life creating, Carpentier left Habana and fell in love with La Gran Sabana in Venezuela, where he
traveled on three separate occasions.
Los Pasos Perdidos is a story about a musician who leaves New York to come to La Gran Sabana in search of indigenous musical instruments
to bring back to a museum. He winds up falling in love with the more laid-back lifestyle that he encounters, and with a local woman, and is caught trying to bridge the gap between his former life and his new one. Extremely well received by critics, Los Pasos Perdidos has been translated into more than 20 languages.
Hungry Lightning was written by an anthropology student who lived for two years with the Pumé in the Venezuelan jungle. Primarily a personal account of the experiences of author Pei-Lin Yu, the book also describes most aspects of daily life in the village she lived in.
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