The place where the world ends;: A modern story of cannibalism and human courage

by Richard Cunningham

208 pages, Hardcover

First published January 1, 1973

Reviews

[Arcadia Shanklin · Rating 4 out of 5]

This book was published in 1973, the same year as Alive and less than 12 months from the time the events occurred which it is about. It feels urgently written to take advantage of the moment when the world was still reeling from the discovery that sixteen men had survived a plane crash and 72 days in the heart of the Andy’s Mountains.

I have read almost every definitive text (available in English) about this event, and there are two categories these books fall into: ones which were written by the survivors or with assistance of the survivors, and ones which were not. The Place Where The World Ends belongs in the second category. And it shows. That’s not to say that this wasn’t an engaging read, I appreciate the stylistic choice to write as though a survivor Journal has been recovered (without specifying which survivor the author is writing as) it’s a clever literary device to put the story in first person.

Unfortunately, this book gets wrong things like the date and circumstances under which Numa Tucartti died (December 11, not December 15), the relationship between Eduardo and Adolfo Strauch (they were double cousins, not brothers as this book alleges) and what use the deflated rugby ball was put to (a communal indoor urine receptacle, not a bladder for carrying drinking water) … and with these facts, being inaccurately reported, it calls into question other details included in this book that I haven’t come across or don’t remember from previous, more reliable books.

I really enjoyed reading about the search efforts of the parents, and the stuff that was happening off of the mountain, which is something not all of the books go into. But again I don’t know how reliable any of it is and so I take it with a grain of salt.

The dust jacket has a little bio about the author, including the phrase “he is married to a Chilean girl”- a strange choice of words. I probably would’ve phrased it “the author‘s wife is Chilean” but maybe that’s the seventies for you, where a married woman could be described as a girl.

In conclusion, I have now read a dozen books about the Flight 571 crash and survival. This book may not be perfect, but I consider it a valuable addition to my Andes 1972 Library.

[Mumbler]

Read excerpt in _Survive: Stories Of Castaways And Cannibals_. Terse diary account of Andes crash, in (odd) false first-person plural. A few details of interest, having read Parrado's book, and looked through _Alive_.