Alive
Alive: The Story of the Andes Survivors is Piers Paul Read's 1974 nonfiction account of the sixteen Uruguayans who, against all reasonable expectation, survived the October 1972 crash of Uruguayan Air Force Flight 571 in the high Andes. The plane, a chartered Fairchild FH-227 carrying an amateur rugby team known as the Old Christians on its way from Montevideo to a match in Santiago, struck a ridge at roughly twelve thousand feet during a snowstorm and crashed onto a high glacier. Twenty-nine of the forty-five aboard survived the impact. Over the next seventy-two days, the survivors faced sub-zero nights, an avalanche that buried the fuselage and killed eight more, and the central, agonizing decision to eat the frozen flesh of their dead friends and family in order to stay alive. Read, granted full cooperation by the survivors and their families and bound by a remarkable agreement among them that none would speak publicly outside the book, produced an unsensationalized, clear-eyed account that has remained the definitive telling for half a century.
Themes & atmosphere
What you might want to know about Alive
The questions readers send us most often, answered without spoilers.
In 1972 a chartered plane carrying a Uruguayan rugby team crashes high in the Andes. Survivors spend more than two months on the mountain making decisions no one had prepared them for.
Yes. Alive is Piers Paul Read's 1974 nonfiction account of the 1972 Andes flight disaster, in which a Uruguayan rugby team crashed in the mountains and survived 72 days, ultimately resorting to cannibalism. Read interviewed survivors extensively.
Yes. A 1993 film directed by Frank Marshall and starring Ethan Hawke was based on the book. A 2007 documentary, Stranded: I've Come from a Plane That Crashed on the Mountains, also covers the same events.
Alive was written by Piers Paul Read, published in 1920 by Bca.
Alive is 320 pages in standard print editions, though page counts vary slightly between hardcover, paperback, and large-print formats.
At an average reading pace of about 250 words per minute, Alive takes most readers 5 to 7 hours to finish.
Alive is a standalone novel by Piers Paul Read, not part of a series.
Alive is available in hardcover, paperback, ebook, and audiobook formats from Amazon, Bookshop.org, ThriftBooks, and most major bookstores.