Christopher Isherwood, The Condor and the Cows
Isherwood, Christopher. The Condor and the Cows. First English Edition. 1949. Book and dust jacket are both in very good condition—book has occasional light pencil marks, and jacket spine shows a repaired tear. Photographs by William Caskey.
This is the midcentury travel diary of a six-month journey through South America by Christopher Isherwood and his romantic partner William Caskey. They travel from Venezuela to Argentina, bypassing only Uruguay and Brazil. The title comes from a macabre experience Isherwood witnessed in the Andes (described on page 110), in which condors made cattle their prey. The book includes ninety-four gravure images of photographs of their journey.
“The condors disappeared—to get help, apparently—for they returned a few minutes later with twenty-five others, and all of them swooped down upon the pack-train. In the confusion, two horses fell over the precipice; their rides jumped down just in time. Condors will peck the eyes out of cows and then drive them with their winds off the edge of a cliff; the cows get killed and the condors eat them.”
--Christopher Isherwood