Geoffrey Firmin, a former British consul, has come to Quauhnahuac, Mexico. His debilitating malaise is drinking, an activity that has overshadowed his life. On the most fateful day of the consul's life—the Day of the Dead, 1938—his wife, Yvonne, arrives in Quauhnahuac, inspired by a vision of life together away from Mexico and the circumstances that have driven their relationship to the brink of collapse. She is determined to rescue Firmin and their failing marriage, but her mission is further complicated by the presence of Hugh, the consul's half brother, and Jacques, a childhood friend. The events of this one significant day unfold against an unforgettable backdrop of a Mexico at once magical and diabolical.

Under the Volcano remains one of literature's most powerful and lyrical statements on the human condition, and a brilliant portrayal of one man's constant struggle against the elemental forces that threaten to destroy him.

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Under the Volcano remains one of the most powerful and lyrical statements on the human condition and one man's constant struggle against the elemental forces that threaten to destroy him....

A NEW YORK REVIEW BOOKS ORIGINAL

Notorious for a misspent life full of binges, blackouts, and unimaginable bad luck, Malcolm Lowry managed, against every odd, to complete and publish two novels, one of them, Under the Volcano, an indisputable masterpiece. At the time of his death in 1957, Lowry also left behind a great deal of uncollected and unpublished writing: stories, novellas, drafts of novels and revisions of drafts of novels (Lowry was a tireless revisiter and reviser—and interrupter—of his work), long, impassioned, haunting, beautiful letters overflowing with wordplay and lament, fraught short poems that display a sozzled off-the-cuff inspiration all Lowry’s own. Over the years these writings have appeared in various volumes, all long out of print. Here, in The Voyage That Never Ends, the poet, translator, and critic Michael Hofmann has drawn on all this scattered and inaccessible material to assemble the first book that reflects the full range of Lowry’s extraordinary and singular achievement.

The result is a revelation. In the letters—acknowledged to be among modern literature’s greatest—we encounter a character who was, as contemporaries attested, as spellbinding and lovable as he was self-destructive and infuriating. In the late fiction—the long story “Through the Panama,” sections of unfinished novels such as Dark as the Grave Wherein My Friend Is Laid, and the little-known La Mordida—we discover a writer who is blazing a path into the unknown and, as he goes, improvising a whole new kind of writing. Lowry had set out to produce a great novel, something to top Under the Volcano, a multivolume epic and intimate tale of purgatorial suffering and ultimate redemption (called, among other things, “The Voyage That Never Ends”). That book was never to be. What he produced instead was an unprecedented and prophetic blend of fact and fiction, confession and confusion, essay and free play, that looks forward to the work of writers as different as Norman Mailer and William Gass, but is like nothing else. Almost in spite of himself, Lowry succeeded in transforming his disastrous life into an exhilarating art of disaster. The Voyage That Never Ends is a new and indispensable entry into the world of one of the masters of modern literature....

Complemento a la vez que quintaesencia de su obra narrativa, la poesia de Malcolm Lowry no ha sido hasta el momento valorada, ni leida, como se merece. Tal vez era necesario que un poeta de la talla de Juan Luis Panero seleccionara sus poemas mas significativos para que el lector pudiera disfrutar de sus imagenes y evocaciones, estrechamente relacionadas con la biografia de Lowry y, por supuesto, con su obra, en particular con su novela Bajo el volcan. / Supplement to the time of his quintessential narrative, the poetry of Malcolm Lowry has not been rated so far, or read, as it deserves. Perhaps it was necessary for a poet of the stature of Juan Luis Panero select the most significant for his poems that the reader can enjoy your pictures and memories, which are closely related to the biography of Lowry, and of course with his work, particularly with his novel Under the Volcano....

Bill Plantagenet es un pianista de jazz britanico, alcoholizado, lector ferviente de Melville y apasionado por los grandes barcos. Cuando llega a Nueva York, comprueba que todo en su vida han sido naufragios y perdidas, como la de su grupo de musica y su compañera, Ruth. Su peregrinacion por las tabernas del puerto de la ciudad culmina en un hospital psiquiatrico, en realidad un infierno, un barco varado o, segun como se mire, una carcel, donde compartira su tiempo y su suerte con marineros, borrachos, pobres de solemnidad y personajes desahuciados como el viejo Kalowsky, el joven Garry o el negro Battle. Mientras contempla desde las ventanas del hospital el paso de los buques por el East River, Bill comprende que el doctor Claggart, el psiquiatra que lo atiende, jamas podra curar su alma enferma. Tal vez, cuando le den el alta, sus pasos le lleven al lugar de donde viene: a las tabernas del puerto, al olvido que le procura el whisky, y todo vuelva a comenzar y a repetirse, sin que sepamos donde esta el principio y donde el final. / Bill Plantagenet is a British jazz pianist, alcoholic, ferving reader of Melville and passionate about big boats. When he arrives to New York, finds that everything in his life have been sinking and losses, like his own band and his companion, Ruth. His pilgrimage by the taverns of the city port culminates in a psychiatric hospital, in fact a hell, or a stranded boat, depending on how you look, a prison, where hell share his time and fortune with sailors, drunken, poor and solemnity characters like the old Kalowsky evicted, the young Garry or Battle, the black guy. While watching the boats passing by the East River Bill understands that Dr. Claggart, the psychiatrist who is in care of him, will never heal his sick soul....