aFrancisco Coloane is the Jack London of our times.a aAlvaro Mutis These spellbinding stories of adventure and discovery are populated with explorers, fortune hunters, revolutionaries, seafarers, shipas captains, and smugglers. But the undeniable protagonist in all nine stories is nature itself. Southern Chile, the worldas end, with its severe beautyacold, treacherous, desolateafinds its ideal poet in Francisco Coloane. In his stories, this stern landscape rises like a definitive symbol of the elementary and ceaseless drama of human conflict. Coloane is a master storyteller, deftly distilling the universal from the particular and the extreme. But no abstraction of this kind can do these tales justice. Their enduring beauty lies in the forceful, gripping narrative, and the elements that move it: menas crimes and passions, and the landas breathtaking glory and murderous wrath. aLong arms, arms like rivers, are necessary to fully embrace Francisco Coloane. Or perhaps itas necessary to be a squall of wind, gusting over him beard and all. Otherwise, take a seat across the table from him and analyze the question, study him deeply; you will surely end by drinking a bottle of wine with Francisco and happily postponing the matter to some later date.aaPablo Neruda