Under the Volcano - Penguin Modern Classics (Paperback)
  • Under the Volcano - Penguin Modern Classics (Paperback)
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Under the Volcano - Penguin Modern Classics (Paperback)

(author), (author of introduction)
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£9.99
Paperback 400 Pages
Published: 03/02/2000
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Waterstones Says

The final hours of the doomed British ex-consul Geoffrey Firmin in the swirl and swelter of Mexico’s Day of the Dead festivities are a fever dream of pirouetting prose and oblique, delirious imagery in Lowry’s outstanding tour de force. 

One of the twentieth century's great undisputed masterpieces, Malcolm Lowry's Under the Volcano includes an introduction by Michael Schmidt in Penguin Modern Classics.

It is the fiesta 'Day of the Dead' in the small Mexican town of Quauhnahuac. In the shadow of the volcano, ragged children beg coins to buy skulls made of chocolate, ugly pariah dogs roam the streets and Geoffrey Firmin - ex-consul, ex-husband, an alcoholic and a ruined man - is living out the last day of his life.

Drowning himself in mescal while his former wife and half-brother look on, powerless to help him, the consul has become an enduring tragic figure. As the day wears on, it becomes apparent that Geoffrey must die. It is his only escape from a world he cannot understand. His story, the image of one man's agonised journey towards Calvary, became a prophetic book for a whole generation.

Malcolm Lowry (1909-1957) was born and died in England. Between school and studying English at St Catherine's College, Cambridge he spent five months at sea as a deckhand, an experience which gave him the material for his first novel, Ultramarine (1933). After marrying in Paris, he moved to New York where he completed In Ballast to the White (1936). Under The Volcano was begun in Hollywood, coloured by a short stay in the Mexico that it describes, and eventually finished in Dollarton, British Columbia.

Publisher: Penguin Books Ltd
ISBN: 9780141182254
Number of pages: 400
Weight: 283 g
Dimensions: 198 x 129 x 18 mm

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“Under the Volcano”

Lowry's blistering masterpiece is a kind of dramatic poem that explores the nasty side of life: alcoholism, violence and broken dreams are its subject matter. Geoffrey Firmin spends the Mexican Day of the Dead-... More

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