Lost Countries of South America is an adventurous, wide-ranging and original study that blends history, travel writing, and eyewitness narrative to bring the continent's untold past and fascinating present to life.

There is a familiar story about South America. The Inca Empire held sway over a mysterious, isolated continent. Then, the guns, germs and steel of Spanish conquistadors wiped out all native resistance overnight. Colonial powers freely plundered its riches. And, after the genius of a few military men won its independence, the region soon fell into conflict and chaos, condemning it to the periphery of the global stage.

But this simplistic picture is now being turned upside down. Taking ten supposedly vanished and forgotten South American nations as his waymarks, journalist Laurence Blair travels to each in turn - an intrepid journey on foot and horseback, railway and river - delving into their unexpected histories and long, contested afterlives.

From an unbowed Inca enclave in the mountains and sprawling ancient city-states in the Amazon rainforest, via a mighty Patagonian nation of mounted warrior-diplomats that humbled a global superpower, to a fearsome guerrilla nation of runaways that fought slavery in colonial Brazil for a century, the African patriots who marched over the Andes to overthrow an empire, and the radical, recurring dream of a united continent, Blair uncovers unfamiliar stories of complexity and coexistence - as well as resistance, rebellion and revolution.

Drawing on rich archival sources, ground-breaking recent scholarship, and stunning archaeological findings, as well as encounters with drug lords, scholars, guerrillas, environmentalists, Indigenous leaders and urban activists, Lost Countries of South America weaves a compelling, fast-paced narrative that speaks to universal themes of memory and national identity, placing an overlooked region at the centre of the history of the world - and its future.