Shafik Meghji at The Book Elephant in Conversation with Karen Edwards.

Small Earthquakes uncovers the fascinating story of Britain’s forgotten connections with South America, from the Atacama Desert to Tierra del Fuego, Easter Island to South Georgia.

Blending travel writing, history and reportage, award-winning journalist and author Shafik Meghji tells a tale of footballers and pirates, nitrate kings and wool barons, polar explorers and cowboys, missionaries and radical MPs. From a ghost town in one of the world’s driest deserts to a far-flung ranch in the sub-polar tundra; rusting whaling stations in the South Atlantic to an isolated railway built by convicts; the southernmost city on the planet to a crumbling port known as the ‘Jewel of the Pacific’, he brings to life the past, present and future of this remarkable continent.