Essays on Love & Eroticism

The Double Flame

Octavio Paz is one of the great European cultural icons of the 20th century before whom we all perforce bow down and worship.

The celebrated poet and essayist, Octavio Paz was born in 1914 in Mexico City. Paz began to write at an early age, and in 1937,  travelled to Valencia, Spain, to participate in the Second International Congress of Anti-Fascist Writers. His illustrious career led to him being awarded the 1990 Nobel Prize for Literature. He died in 1998.

A discourse on the connection between sex, eroticism and love in literature by the Nobel Prize-winning poet and essayist.

The Labyrinth of Solitude

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'A profound and original book' Sunday Times

Octavio Paz was born in Mexico City in 1914 to a family of Spanish and native Mexican descent. He  was the author of more than twenty-five books of poetry and prose. In addition to being a poet, essayist, playwright, social philosopher, and critic, he also served as a Mexican diplomat in France and Japan, and as ambassador to India. He was awarded the Cervantes Award in 1981, the Neustadt Prize in 1982, and the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1990. Octavio Paz died in 1998.

As well as the nine essays on his country's psyche and history that make up 'The Labyrinth of Solitude', this highly acclaimed volume also includes 'The Other Mexico', Paz's heartfelt response to the government massacre of over three hundred students in Mexico City in 1968, and 'Return to the Labyrinth of Solitude', in which he discusses his famous work with Claude Fell. The two final essays contain further reflections on the Mexican government.

Octavio Paz

In 1951 Octavio Paz travelled to India to serve as an attaché in the Mexican Embassy. Eleven years later he returned as Mexico's ambassador. In Light of India is Paz's celebration of that country and his most personal work of prose to date. As in all of his essays, he brings poetic insight and voluminous knowledge to bear on the subject, and the result is a series of fascinating discourses on India's landscape, culture and history. 
 
'The Antipodes of Coming and Going' is a lyrical remembrance of Paz's days in India, evoking with astonishing clarity the sights, sounds, smells and denizens of the subcontinent. 'Religions, Castes, Languages' gives a survey of Indian history and its astonishing polyglot society. 'A Project of Nationhood' is an examinatino of modern Indian politics, comparing the respective Islamic, Hindu and Western civilizations through the course of history. 'The Full and the Empty' is an exploration of what Paz calls the soul of India, its art, literature, music and philosophy. It is also an uncompromising indictment of the self-centred materialism of Western society.

Octavio Paz

Books by Octavio Paz

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