Alive: The Story of the Andes Survivors
Alive: The Story of the Andes Survivors is a 1974 book by the British writer Piers Paul Read documenting the events of Uruguayan Air Force Flight 571.Story
Alive tells the story of the Uruguayan Rugby team (who were alumni of Stella Maris College (Montevideo)) and their friends and family who were involved in the airplane crash of Uruguayan Air Force Flight 571 which crashed into the Andes mountains on October 13, 1972. Of the 45 people who embarked on the flight, only 16 survived, while resorting to cannibalism in order to survive. It was published two years after survivors of the crash were rescued.
Read interviewed the survivors and their families for an extensive period of time before writing the book. He comments on this process in the Acknowledgments section:
“ I was given a free hand in writing this book by both the publisher and the sixteen survivors. At times I was tempted to fictionalize certain parts of the story because this might have added to their dramatic impact but in the end I decided that the bare facts were sufficient to sustain the narrative...when I returned in October 1973 to show them the manuscript of this book, some of them were disappointed by my presentation of their story. They felt that the faith and friendship which inspired them in the cordillera do not emerge from these pages. It was never my intention to underestimate these qualities, but perhaps it would be beyond the skill of any writer to express their own appreciation of what they lived through." (1)
(1) Read, Piers Paul, 'Alive', p. 10