Whether it's Señora Botero de Mejia, an elderly woman who roams the streets of Bogotá distributing food to the poorest, the shoeshiner Xavier in Ecuador, who is intrigued by the mysteries of language, jealous retirees, or devout underage mothers: Andreas Altmann distills from their life stories an unsentimental portrait of contemporary South America, showing that greed and destruction are only a hand's breadth away from mercy and love. In his anger about the state of the world, his love for the people, their will to live, and their beauty continually emerges. Andreas Altmann has written a wonderfully intense, witty, and thought-provoking travel book, captivating until the very last page.