The Latin American holiday commemorating dead relatives is characterised by altars decorated with skulls and marigolds, explains the author of a book on how the festival has now migrated to the American mainstream

The best-selling novelist tells us about books that evoke the land of his parents, from a noirish take on contemporary Havana to the cabaret scene of pre-Castro Cuba

The political scientist tells us what to read if we want to know why Latin American voters elect left-wing leaders, and how those leaders end up governing differently from each other

From magical realism to political upheaval, John King, Professor Emeritus at Warwick University, recommends five essential works of Latin American fiction – and reveals what Jorge Luis Borges was like in person.

U.S. government adviser and Dean of the American University School of Public Affairs leads a book-bound tour that takes us from the Bacardi dynasty in Cuba to American military interventions in Central America

Professor at University of London says that ‘Latin America’ is a term that only dates from the 1830s. He chooses five books that illuminate the cultural and political history of that region

The former Rio de Janeiro bureau chief for the New York Times, Larry Rohter, discusses five books that explore the strain of tragedy lurking just beneath Brazil’s ‘happy’ image.

The author and academic says the global financial meltdown has shattered the apparently sophisticated, but in fact conceptually hollow, foundations upon which “self-regulated” markets were built

Journalist and author Chris Moss recommends books to help us understand the Argentine people and their mindset.

Explorer, film-maker and writer, Hugh Thomson, picks the best books on Mexico, from the revolution in 1910, to the conquistadors, to gold mines, to the fatalism of Mexico and more.

Lecturer in Latin American Politics at Oxford says the Concertación are bitterly divided and have so lost their purpose that they need a period in opposition to regroup. The parallels with Britain are striking