Forcing the boundaries of genre: the imaginative geography of South America in Luis Sepulveda's Patagonia Express

This article considers how literary genre conditions the influence of imaginative geographies on textual representations of place and space. Focusing on a central case study, it argues that the representation of South America in Luis Sepulveda's popular travelogue Patagonia Express is the product of interplay between two competing forces: the boundaries imposed by the travelogue genre and a widely-circulated imaginative geography of South America as a space where 'the fantastic' or magical is inherent to everyday reality.