"Colorful and meandering, by turns hilarious and horrifying, often delightful. . .and very, very odd. . . . An entirely faithful reflection of its subject." --"The New York Times Book Review""[Gimlette's] account is so rich in anecdotes, so suffused in color and dialect that we are left with a sense of having somehow inhaled all this Paraguayan history and then experienced it through a nightmare or a dream. Gimlette has given us a cast of characters as vivid as any by Dickens or Waugh.""-- The New York Times""Gimlette knows his subject cold, and it's a subject bound to have something for everyone . . . Charming and vivid. . . crammed full of a wild cast of characters and incredible experiences." --"San Francisco Chronicle" "A hilarious, informed anti-travelogue . . . with generous detail grounded in the author's personal experiences, this is a travel book of the mind."--"The Boston Globe" "Blends travelogue, history and flights of descriptive whimsy to highly tonic effect. . . . For all his mastery of Paraguayan history, it's Gimlette's extravagant prose and unhinged enthusiasm that make the book. . . . You couldn't ask for a more entertaining guide." --"The Seattle Times" "Hilarious. . . . What keeps you reading about Paraguay, maybe in spite of yourself, is Gimlette's marvelous wit and eye for character." --"Pittsburgh Post-Gazette" "Reading the book is like watching a Komodo dragon eat a tethered goat. Paraguay, as Gimlette portrays it, is . . . completely bizarre. . . . Conquistadores and Nazis, whores and cannibals, all of them rather awful, all of them splendidly rendered. . . . Graham Greene would have approved." --"National GeographicAdventure""A glorious travel book . . . in which the country's craziness is portrayed with humor, insight and considerable deftness of touch. . . . As a historian of the absurd [Gimlette] is superlative." --"The Sunday Times" (London) "A wildly entertaining read: a raucous blend of history, travelogue, and guide." --"Conde Nast Traveler" "At The Tomb of the Inflatable Pig should be ranked among the very best explorations of its kind: at once a history and a guide to one of the least hospitable nations on earth." --"The Washington Times" "Irreverent and rambunctious. . . . [A] superior travel book." --"Foreign Affairs""An extraordinary book, part history, part travelogue . . . so vivid that nobody reading it is ever likely to forget the country. . . . A book that sheds fascinating light on a forgotten corner of Latin America'" --"The Daily Telegraph" (London) "A richly detailed catalog of oddities and horrors, the kind of eccentricities that flourish in isolation. . . . [Gimlette] spills Paraguay's cruelest, most shameful secrets, but his admiration for the forlorn middle country is real on every page." --"Outside" "Howlingly entertaining. . . . There [is] no resisting Gimlette's rollicking account." --"San Diego Union-Tribune" "A truly wonderful exploration of one of the world's most captivating countries ... Brilliant." --"Sunday Express" "[A] wonderful, wacky book. . . . Filled with the offbeat and the bizarre. Gimlette's narrative attempts to flesh out a country that is as difficult to define as nailing Jell-O to a wall. Vivid, riotous, fascinating and never dull, his book is wildly entertaining." --"The Tucson Citizen" "Compelling. . .. Blackly comical. . . . Spicy, exuberant prose." --"Mail on Sunday" (London) "Eccentric and richly descriptive. . . . The best travel writers are those with both a sense of history and a sense of humor, and Gimlette qualifies on both counts." --"Richmond Times-Dispatch""[Gimlette] has a firm grasp of the country's intriguing past, and a watchful eye on its perplexing present." "--Literary Review" "Terrifically funny. . . . A great book in the noble tradition of British travel writing." --"Hartford Advocate" "Perceptive and entertaining." --"The Times Literary Supplement" (London)