Snow Brotherhood

Society of the Snow is the definitive account of the most incredible story ever told. If it were fiction, it would seem unbelievable. But the story was, and is, true. For the first time, all those who survived are speaking out since the plane crash that struck them in their twenties in the Andes, at an altitude of four thousand metres above sea level, in temperatures of around thirty degrees below zero, without warm clothing or food.

Pablo Vierci accompanied a group of survivors who, years later—now with their own children—returned to the crash site in the Andes. All sixteen who made it out alive recall those seventy-two days in the mountains, how they overcame the extreme situation, their perception of death, what the accident meant to them, and how it affected their lives. The book recounts the moments just before the crash, describes the group’s subsequent survival in the heart of the high mountains, and follows the life stories of the society's members after the disaster.

Above all, however, the author reveals to the reader what lies behind the story, in which the noise of the falling aircraft blends with the majestic silence of the high mountains, creating a magnificent mosaic of sixteen different ways to face death and survive.