The Dictator's Highway: Patagonian Exploits along the Carretera Austral

After seizing power in a violent coup, President Augusto Pinochet ordered the construction of the Carretera Austral, a highway across Chile’s southern wilderness. Staggering over mountain passes, skirting around volcanoes and glaciers, and cutting across interminable stretches of dense rainforest, the ambitious project took the rest of the century to complete.

In an absorbing account, Justin Walker explores this territory from one end to the other, a thousand kilometres and more, moving from...