It was a voice so sonorously deep, yet so delicately controlled, that it seemed to issue forth from the Pachamama herself, the earth goddess of the Quechua-speaking people of the Inca empire from whom Ms Sosa partially descended.
With the demise of the Soviet Union, Mr Terrill says, China is now the only empire left on earth, if the term empire is defined as a multicultural country held together essentially by force.