Patagonia is a landscape of the imagination. It doesn’t fit quite neatly on the map or have any obvious borders, making it a perfect place for travel daydreamers – and writers. There are a host of great books out there about Patagonia and its parent nations, Argentina and Chile. To help you guide you through this library, we’ve created this read list by setting out 40 of our favourite Patagonia books.
From travelogues and histories to mountaineering books and wildlife guides, you’ll find the best of Patagonia in print here.
- Best books to introduce Patagonia, Argentina and Chile
- Best travel books about Patagonia
- Best history books about Patagonia
- Best history books about Argentina and Chile
- Best historic memoirs from Patagonia
- Best wildlife guides to Patagonia
- Best books about mountaineering in Patagonia
- Best illustrated books about Patagonia
Best books to introduce Patagonia, Argentina and Chile
Patagonia: A Cultural History by Chris Moss is one book we never have far from our reach at Swoop. Whether you’re looking for stories of Patagonia’s indigenous people, European explorers, famous travellers or modern perspectives, this is always a fascinating book to read through or just dip into.
Seeing how writers and travellers have experienced a destination is always a great way to get a sense of place, which is why we love having Argentina: A Traveler’s Literary Companion by Jill Gibian and Katherine Silver’s Chile: A Traveler’s Literary Companion on our shelves. Either one will give a perfect taste of their respective countries.
For a deeper and even richer dive we’d highly recommend The Argentina Reader by Gabriela Nouzeilles Gabriela Nouzeilles and Graciela Montaldo, alongside The Chile Reader by Elizabeth Quay Hutchison, Thomas Miller Klubock, Nara B. Milanic and Peter Winn. Both volumes have five centuries of writing from local voices, much of it never before translated into English, building up an unbeatable picture of Patagonia’s two countries.
Best travel books about Patagonia
Where to start with In Patagonia by Bruce Chatwin? It’s one of the true classics of travel literature, and the one book that people cite again and again when you tell them you’re looking for something to read about the region. It’s strange and beautiful—and as much fiction as travelogue—but when the writing is as beguiling as Chatwin’s does it really matter?
Our favourite book to appear about Patagonia in years arrived in 2025 in the shape of Shafik Meghji’s Small Earthquakes, which uses the frame of Britain’s forgotten history in Patagonia to weave a brilliant narrative from Buenos Aires to Tierra del Fuego and beyond, with a historian’s eye for detail and a journalist’s ear for a great story. (We liked it so much we asked Shafik to write about his journey for us).
Plenty of books about the region end up taking in great chunks of South America as well, as it is with The Old Patagonian Express, celebrated writer Paul Theroux’s account of an epic train across the continent. A modern classic of the travel genre from a great (if sometimes grumpy) writer.
Patagonia is a destination typically covered by foreign travel writers, so it’s a treat to have False Calm by Argentinian writer Maria Sonia Cristoff on the shelves. A blend of reportage, travelogue and personal meditation, it’s a beautiful work exploring Cristoff’s trips through the ghost towns and empty landscapes.
Travels in a Thin Country by Sara Wheeler (author of one of our favourite books about Antarctica) is an account of her travels down the length of the country, from the Peruvian border all the way south through Patagonia as far as Cape Horn. It’s a compelling portrait of a nation rediscovering itself during its post-Pinochet return to democracy.
A charming time capsule, The Whispering Land by Gerald Durrell tells of the eight months that the zookeeper-turned-conservationist spent in Argentina in the 1950s looking for its wildlife. A witty read, with a strong focus on Patagonia.
Katharine Elliott’s Patagonia: The Camino Home follows the hiking routes taken by many travellers through Torres del Paine and Los Glaciares, using the time-honoured medium of a long walk through nature to reflect on a personal spiritual journey.
Those looking to explore the region’s gaucho spirit should look to Dark Horses at the Patagonian Frontier by Jon Burrough, which follows his epic horse ride along and around the length of the Carretera Austral in the early 2000s, when the last stage of the road was only just nearing completion.
Best books about Patagonia history
There are only a very limited number of non-academic history books about Patagonia on the market, which made the publication in 2025 of Darwin’s Savages by Matthew Carr such an essential moment. This unsparing account of the colonisation of Patagonia and the wars against its indigenous people is a crucial, unsettling read.
For those who like sea stories, it’s hard to beat The Wager by David Grann. This best-selling story of shipwreck and mutiny along the shores of Tierra del Fuego in the early years of the 18th Century is a real page-turner, with a grisly secret at its heart.
Best history books about Argentina and Chile
To get to know Patagonia, it can often help to understand how it fits into the wider stories of Argentina, Chile and South America as a whole.
A History of Argentina from the Spanish Conquest to the Present was published in 2020. Author Ezequiel Adamovsky does exactly what he promises on the cover, offering readers the most accessible single-volume history of the country currently on the bookshelves.
The ‘Paris of South America’ has long captured the hearts of visitors, and those wanting to get under its skin can do no better than picking up Jason Wilson’s Buenos Aires, an intimate portrait of this vibrant city.
For a continent-wide survey, Open Veins of Latin America by Eduardo Galeano remains a classic work more than 50 years after its initial publication, influencing several generations of writers and thinkers for its focus on how the experience of empire shaped the region’s development.
A more contemporary account of the region can be found in Michael Reid’s Forgotten Continent: A History of the New Latin America, which ranges from the independence struggles of the Bolívar period to the present day – with a recent revised edition covering the first Trump presidency.
To understand modern Chile, it’s essential to understand the history of the Pinochet dictatorship. A Nation of Enemies by Pamela Constable and Arturo Valenzuela is the best primer available on this dark period of the nation’s history.
Best historic memoirs from Patagonia
When it comes to historic accounts of Patagonia, it’s hard to escape the shadow of The Uttermost Part of the Earth by Lucas Bridges, born to missionary parents on Tierra del Fuego in 1874. It’s an astonishing portrait of the island, and the indigenous people who lived there by someone who spoke their language and connected deeply with their culture.
Across Patagonia by Lady Florence Dixie, written in 1880, is an account of one adventurous Victorian lady’s travels and hunting experiences in the wilds of Patagonia. Dixies may have been the first western woman to see Torres del Paine.
Idle Days in Patagonia by W.H Hudson is the travelogue of a Buenos Aires-born Briton, who spent a year travelling in the region. A keen naturalist, he was admired by Darwin, and the book contains some wonderful evocations of the local flora and fauna.
At Home with the Patagonians by George Chaworth Musters is a great account of a long trek across southern Patagonia in the 1880s, often in the company of the Tehuelche people. Musters is refreshingly open to their culture, unlike many of his contemporaries (see our article, Looking for my ancestor, the King of Patagonia about a trip in his footsteps by his great-great-great nephew).
Best wildlife guides to Patagonia
Our most battered wildlife guide—the one that’s been in the most Swoop backpacks—is A Wildlife Guide to Chile by Sharon Chester. Superbly illustrated, with both mammals and birds, it covers almost everything you might want to know and can be used at a pinch for most of Argentinian Patagonia.
For the dedicated birder, there are two excellent guides available, either of which are worthy additions to the luggage song alongside your binoculars and life list. Choose either between The Illustrated Handbook of the Birds of Patagonia by CJ Kovacs, Ors Kovacs, Zsolt Kovacs and Carlos Mariano Kovacs, or The Birds of Southern South America and Antarctica by Martin de la Pena and Maurice Rumboll. Both are excellently and clearly illustrated, with well organised taxonomic guides and distribution maps. The former guide is Patagonia specific, while the latter includes southern Brazil (making it perfect for Iguazú Falls) as well as Antarctica.
If you prefer single-country guides, we recommend birders pick up either the excellent Birds of Chile by Daniel Martínez Piña and Gonzalo González Cifuentes, or Birds of Argentina and the South-West Atlantic by Mark Pearman and Juan Ignacio Areta.
For a great mix of nature and science, go for Jim Williams’ Path of the Puma. Spanning two continent but with a strong focus on Patagonia, it tells the story of the most successful predator in the Americas, and the conservation and rewilding efforts to protect it.
Best books about mountaineering in Patagonia
Some of the great travel accounts of Patagonia were written by the first mountaineering pioneers who were drawn here to climb its peaks.
Eric Shipton was one of the original pioneers of mountaineering in Patagonia, and tells those stories well in his book Land of Tempest: Travels in Patagonia, 1958-1962, which includes a traverse of the Northern Patagonian Ice Field and ascents of some of Tierra del Fuego’s highest peaks.
Mischief In Patagonia by H. W. Tilman recounts more early days mountaineering, with glacier climbs and peaks, frostbite on the Ice Field plus a dash of high seas adventure in yachts around Tierra del Fuego, all served up some classic British understatement.
The Springs of Enchantment by John Earle covers two climbs more than a decade apart – the first with the author as a young climber with Eric Shipton in the Darwin Range, and the second a series of peaks climbed in tribute to Earle’s mentor, told with witty prose and a keen eye for detail.
Gregory Crouch’s Enduring Patagonia is the only book on this list to concentrate on the peaks of Los Glaciares, with dramatic portraits of Cerro Torre and FitzRoy, and the obsession needed to climb in Patagonia’s endless winds combining to produce a thoughtful inner voyage behind the technical climbs.
Best illustrated books about Patagonia
Patagonia National Park: Chile by photographer Linde Waidhofer is a wonderful coffee table book concentrating on a single place – the eponymous national park in Aysen, and celebrating Rewilding Chile’s hugely successful project to restore its wilderness.
Patagonia: The Last Wilderness by Axel Bos and Daniel Rivadema sets out its stall early with its cover image of Perito Moreno Glacier, then hits the reader with a succession of striking panoramas showing off Patagonia’s epic nature through landscape photography.
Whether you’re drawn by its vast landscapes and imposing mountains, its history or wildlife, or just the love of a good travel yarn, Patagonia’s richness is well-represented on the pages of these books. We hope this list proves a useful companion for you to explore the region – whether from your armchair or by grabbing a favourite title and taking it with you on your next trip to the ends of the Earth.
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