"Lowry's masterpiece" about a fateful Day of the Dead in a small Mexican town and one man's struggle against the forces threatening to destroy him ( Los Angeles Times).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 ...

Malcolm Lowry’s remarkable Under the Volcano unfolds over the course of a single day, and follows the lives of an alcoholic British consul to Mexico, Geoffrey Firmin, his estranged wife, Yvonne, and Hugh, Geoffrey’s half-brother. On the Mexican Day of the Dead, Yvonne makes a valiant, yet ultimately futile attempt to rescue Geoffrey from his drinking and his demons, but reveals instead only the inner turmoil of a man ruined by drink and unrealized ambitions.Under the V...

Paradise proves fleeting in this engrossing tale of a married couple who tries to chase away the past by immersing themselves in natureEdited by Malcolm Lowry's widow and released more than a decade after his death, October Ferry to Gabriola is the sentimental story of two individuals striving for sanity, inspiration, hope, and purpose in the deep seclusion of the British Columbian forest. Once the couple finds a new home in the woods, their new, off-the-gr...

Seven stories and novellas by the author of Under the Volcano, a master of twentieth-century fiction.For fans of the novel Under the Volcano, this collection of stories—many of them published for the first time posthumously—provides great insight into the author's genius. The stories range from heartfelt tragedy to exuberant triumph. In the novella "Through the Panama," a burned-out, alcoholic writer tries to make sense of the literature that has ...

'Staring out at the river his agony was like a great lidless eye'In this stark, compelling and greatly autobiographical novella, Malcolm Lowry tells the story of Bill Plantagenet, a piano player and ex-sailor who has lost his band and his mind drinking in New York. As Plantagenet commits himself to a Psychiatric hospital to suffer his recovery, Lowry writes with eloquent ferocity on the delusions of madness, and the true meaning of sanity.

From the author of Under the Volcano: A novel of a young man's flight from the upper class to join the hard-living crew of a freighter bound for South Asia.In this debut novel by the acclaimed novelist and poet, Dana Hilliot seeks absolution from his wealthy British upbringing, escaping the bourgeois provincialism of his origins by setting out to sea as a messboy amid a crew of weathered, world-weary sailors. Lost somewhere between Singapore and Bombay, Hi...

Two mountain chains traverse the republic roughly from north to south, forming between them a number of valleys and plateaus. Overlooking one of these valleys, which is dominated by two volcanoes, lies, six thousand feet above sea level, the town of Quauhnahuac. It is situated well south of the Tropic of Cancer, to be exact on the nineteenth parallel, in about the same latitude as the Revillagigedo Islands to the west in the Pacific, or very much further west, the southernmost tip of Hawai...

Malcolm Lowry's 'Under the Volcano' is a profound exploration of the human condition set against the backdrop of 1930s Mexico. The novel intricately weaves together the experiences of Geoffrey Firmin, a British consul grappling with alcoholism and existential despair, as he navigates the volcanic landscape both literally and metaphorically. Lowry's literary style is rich and poetic, employing a stream-of-consciousness technique that immerses readers in the protagonist's fragmented psyche, ...

A quartet of the British novelist's finest works of fiction, including "Lowry's masterpiece," Under the Volcano ( Los Angeles Times).Malcolm Lowry was an author who poured his soul into his prose, including his struggle with his own demons. Of his most famous work, Under the Volcano, Dawn Powell wrote: "You love the author for the pain of his overwhelming understanding." In the New York Herald Tribune, Mark Schorer comme...

Malcolm Lowry's "Under the Volcano" stands as a quintessential exploration of existential despair and human folly set against the backdrop of the Mexican Revolution. The narrative follows Geoffrey Firmin, a British consul spiraling into alcoholism on the Day of the Dead, encapsulating Lowry's complex prose and vivid imagery. Employing stream-of-consciousness and rich symbolism, Lowry crafts a lyrical, yet harrowing journey through the protagonist's disintegration, while reflecting broader ...

Library of Masterpieces—100 Books to Read in a Lifetime offers an ambitious cross-cultural canon of enduring literature, philosophy, drama, and narrative art. Moving from classical epic, tragedy, and political thought to the novel, Gothic romance, detective fiction, modernist experiment, children's literature, and existential reflection, it reveals how literary forms continually remake questions of power, desire, faith, justice, memory, and freedom. Monumental epics, psychologically intric...

Set in Quauhnahuac, Mexico, on the Day of the Dead in 1938, Under the Volcano traces the final hours of Geoffrey Firmin, a ruined British consul whose alcoholism becomes both literal affliction and metaphysical condition. Lowry's prose is dense, symbolic, and allusive, fusing modernist interior monologue with tragic structure, political unease, and mythic patterning. Against the backdrop of fascism's rise and Europe's impending catastrophe, the novel turns one man's disintegration into a v...