Name: Miracle in the Andes
Rating: 4.333333333333333 (9 reviews)
ISBN: 9780739326329

Nando Parrado

Vince Rause

A survivor of the horrific 1972 plane crash that stranded his rugby team in the Andes for seventy-two days provides his account of the ordeal and of his desperate expedition across seventy miles of frozen wilderness to find help.

72 Days on the Mountain and My Long Trek Home

Miracle in the Andes

On 13 October 1972, the members of a top Uruguayan rugby team were flying over the Andes to play in Chile. Their plane crashed into a mountain and was stranded 11,000 feet up on an inhospitable glacier. Many died instantly in the crash, including the person sitting next to Nando, but others survived. They had almost no food or suitable equipment to withstand temperatures as low as -35C, and had to eat the bodies of their dead team-mates to survive. With the prospect only of a slow death, and no rescue likely, Nando and one of his friends set off on an impossible journey, walking and climbing for ten days in search of help. Finally, after 72 days, the 16 survivors were brought to safety. Parrado's unique viewpoint brings a new perspective to this remarkable story. His hugely inspirational tale shows how the strength of the human spirit, the close bond of friendship and faith can make you achieve the impossible. He explains how, once you realise that you must surely die, no risk becomes too great. Above all, Parrado came to understand that the opposite of death wasn't life, but love. And it was love, for his waiting father and the mother and sister who died in the crash, that saw him home.

I still don’t believe it, a true miracle. Fascinating story and can only imagine what it must have been like.

Mitul Shah

NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER • A harrowing, moving memoir of the 1972 plane crash that left its survivors stranded on a glacier in the Andes—and one man’s quest to lead them all home—now in a special edition for 2022, commemorating the fiftieth anniversary of the crash, featuring a new introduction by the author “In straightforward, staggeringly honest prose, Nando Parrado tells us what it took—and what it actually felt like—to survive high in the Andes for seventy-two days after having been given up for dead.”—Jon Krakauer, author of Into the Wild “In the first hours there was nothing, no fear or sadness, just a black and perfect silence.” Nando Parrado was unconscious for three days before he woke to discover that the plane carrying his rugby team to Chile had crashed deep in the Andes, killing many of his teammates, his mother, and his sister. Stranded with the few remaining survivors on a lifeless glacier and thinking constantly of his father’s grief, Parrado resolved that he could not simply wait to die. So Parrado, an ordinary young man with no particular disposition for leadership or heroism, led an expedition up the treacherous slopes of a snowcapped mountain and across forty-five miles of frozen wilderness in an attempt to save his friends’ lives as well as his own. Decades after the disaster, Parrado tells his story with remarkable candor and depth of feeling. Miracle in the Andes, a first-person account of the crash and its aftermath, is more than a riveting tale of true-life adventure; it is a revealing look at life at the edge of death and a meditation on the limitless redemptive power of love.

Obviously the story is incredible, but the book is poorly written. It reads like someone's first attempt at writing a novel rather than a firsthand account of a terrible disaster. However, because it IS a firsthand account by someone who never intended to become a writer, I excuse this on the part of Parrado. I do not, however, excuse his co-writer Vince Rause. I find Parrado insufferable and quite full of himself, but there's no doubt he has quite the story to tell, and despite the awful writing, it's impossible not to cry while reading his account. I read this while also reading Roberto Canessa's account, published ten years after Nando's book, and I rushed to finish this one first so that I could move on to the better written book... (Also, I have so far found one inconsistency between the two, namely who came up with the idea for the snow goggles: Fito or Eduardo? Nando says Eduardo, but he praises Fito's ingenuity in other areas, and Canessa says Fito came up with them and gives additional details on this matter, so I'm inclined to believe it was Fito)

Jonnie

In October 1972, Nando Parrado and his rugby club teammates were on a flight from Uruguay to Chile when their plane crashed into a mountain. Miraculously, many of the passengers survived but Nando's mother and sister died and he was unconscious for three days. Stranded more than 11,000 feet up in the wilderness of the Andes, the survivors soon heard that the search for them had been called off - and realise the only food for miles around was the bodies of their dead friends ... In a last desperate bid for safety, Nando and a teammate set off in search of help. They climbed 17,000-foot-high mountains, facing death at every step, but inspired by his love for his family Nando drove them on until, finally, 72 days after the crash, they found rescue.

Miracle In The Andes

Melody Izard

Miracle is right. How could they have survived so long? Nando decides he has to try to get help and what an impossible walk he has. It's one miracle after another. With some gore. Some cannibalism. But what they hell else could they do?

Andrea Hak-Kovacs

star girl✨

Kourtney Taylor

Miracle in the Andes mengisahkan perjuangan tim rugby Uruguay dalam mempertahankan diri di bekunya Pegunungan Andes. Nando Parrado dan timnya tengah melakukan perjalanan untuk pertandingan persahabatan di Argentina. Akibat cuaca buruk, pesawat carteran yang mereka tumpangi jatuh di tengah Andes. Dari 45 penumpang, hanya 32 yang masih hidup akibat jatuhnya Fairchild. Semakin lama, akibat luka serius dan longsoran salju, korban bertambah banyak hingga tinggal 16 survivors saja. Semangat mereka menjadi setipis udara Andes ketika mendengar dari radio Fairchild bahwa pencarian telah dihentikan. Dalam memoar ini, Nando menunjukkan bahwa besarnya cinta dan kegigihan dapat membuat miracle is achievable. [Mizan, C Publishing, Novel, Indonesia]

Miracle in the Andes 72 Days on the Mountain and My Long Trek Home

Reviews

Highlights