Under The Volcano

In what the New York Times calls “one of the towering novels of [the twentieth] century,” former British consul Geoffrey Firmin lives alone with his demons in the shadow of two active volcanoes in South Central Mexico. 

Gripped by alcoholism, Geoffrey makes one last effort to salvage his crumbling life on the day that his ex-wife, Yvonne, arrives in town. It’s the Day of the Dead, 1938. The couple wants to revive their marriage and undo the wrongs of their past, but they soon realize that they’ve stumbled into the wrong place and time, where not only Geoffrey and Yvonne, but the world itself is on the edge of Armageddon. 

"Through the three central characters, there is the Joycean outpour of consciousness, a diarrhoeic total recall, in the search for the cause of their rejection of life, in their rationalization of their self-portraits, in their knowledge of their griefs, despairs, bewilderment. Their casual, veiled conversations, wandering soul searchings, are highlighted against the Mexican setting, and the effect, sometimes with a brilliance, is a delirium of phantoms. For sophisticates."  -  Kirkus Reviews

Hailed by the Modern Library as one of the one hundred best English novels of the twentieth century, Under The Volcano stands as an iconic and richly drawn example of the modern novel at its most lyrical.