Deep Down Dark The Untold Stories of 33 Men Buried in a Chilean Mine, and the Miracle That Set Them Free

Now a Major Motion Picture Starring Antonio Banderas
Includes New Material Exclusive to the Paperback

A Finalist for a National Book Critics Circle Award
A Finalist for a Los Angeles Times Book Prize
A New York Times Book Review Notable Book

When the San José mine collapsed outside of Copiapó, Chile, in August 2010, it trapped thirty-three miners beneath thousands of feet of rock for a record-breaking sixty-nine days. After the disaster, Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist Héctor Tobar received exclusive access to the miners and their tales, and in Deep Down Dark, he brings them to haunting, visceral life. We learn what it was like to be imprisoned inside a mountain, understand the horror of being slowly consumed by hunger, and experience the awe of working in such a place-one filled with danger and that often felt alive. A masterwork of narrative journalism and a stirring testament to the power of the human spirit, Deep Down Dark captures the profound ways in which the lives of everyone involved in the catastrophe were forever changed.

Héctor Tobar is a Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist and a novelist. He is the author of The Barbarian Nurseries, Translation Nation, and The Tattooed Soldier. The son of Guatemalan immigrants, he is a native of Los Angeles, where he lives with his wife and three children.

Prologue: Cities in the Desert 3

Part I: BENEATH THE MOUNTAIN OF THUNDER AND SORROW
1. A Company Man 19
2. The End of Everything 29
3. The Dinner Hour 43
4. "I'm Always Hungry" 55
5. Red Alert! 73
6. "We Have Sinned" 85
7. Blessed Among Women 103
8. A Flickering Flame 121
9. Cavern of Dreams 139

Part II: SEEING THE DEVIL
10. The Speed of Sound 163
11. Christmas 173
12. Astronauts 187
13. Absolute Leader 207
14. Cowboys 217
15. Saints, Statues, Satan 229
16. Independence Day 237
17. Rebirth 249

Part III: THE SOUTHERN CROSS
18. In a Better Country 267
19. The Tallest Tower 273
20. Underground 283
21. Under the Stars 295

Acknowledgments 307