This affectionate study of the Mexican temper is "one of the most charming travel books ever written." --The Atlantic Monthly

Before returning to the Old World after World War II, Sybille Bedford resolved to see something more of the New. "I had a great longing to move," she said, "to hear another language, eat new food, to be in a country with a long nasty history in the past and as little present history as possible." And so she set out for Mexico--and, incidentally, to write what Bruce Chatwin called the best travel book of the twentieth century, "a book of marvels, to be read again and again and again."