Mornings in Mexico

'If you read only one book of travellers' tales on Mexico, it must be this one. A magnificent blood-and-ganglion pagan response to the primeval savagery south of the Rio Grande.' - Frank McLynn, Top Ten Books, The Guardian

Much of D.H. Lawrence's life was defined by his passion for travel, and it was those peripatetic wanderings that gave life to some of his greatest novels. In the 1920s Lawrence travelled several times to Mexico, where he was fascinated by the clash of beauty and brutality, purity and darkness that he observed there.

The diverse and evocative essays that make up Mornings in Mexico - A Little Moonshine with Lemon, Dance of the Sprouting Corn, Corasmin and the Parrots - wander from an admiring portrayal of the Indian way of life to a visit to the studio of Diego Rivera. They are brightly adorned with simple and evocative details sharply observed: piles of fruit in a village market, strolls in a courtyard filled with hibiscus and roses, the play of light on an adobe wall.

It was during his time in Mexico that Lawrence re-wrote The Plumed Serpent, which is infused with his own experiences there. To read Mornings in Mexico is thus to discover the inspiration behind of one of Lawrence's most loved works and to be immersed in a portrait of the country like no other.