In Light Of India

"Paz the poet intoxicates; Paz the thinker ensures that this is not at the cost of reason and fairness. He intoxicates with reason." -Agha Ali, Los Angeles Times

For six years Octavio Paz served as Mexico's ambassador to India. His experiences there changed his life. Now, in Paz's most personal work of prose to date, he brings his poetic insight and voluminous knowledge to bear on a vast and extraordinary subject: the culture, landscape, and essence of India, a continent and culture that has resonated for millennia. With astonishing clarity, Paz evokes the sounds and sights of Bombay; presents a cogent survey of India's dazzling history and polyglot society; and explores India's art, music, and history. The result will draw the reader deeply into a world of astonishing beauty and power. Translated by Eliot Weinberger.

"The essays in this ambitious book are certainly not 'glimpses'; they are the result of long experience and study, beginning with reminiscences of great charm but leading to disquisitions on India's history, its religions, philosophy and such things as caste, Sanskrit erotic poetry, sculpture and architecture." -Raleigh Trevelyan, The New York Times Book Review