FROM THE PUBLISHER

"The publication of Rebecca West's Survivors in Mexico marks an important literary event: the rescue from oblivion of a daring and important work by an major twentieth-century writer. This book is West's exploration of Mexican history, religion, and culture - a work the author clearly conceived as a companion and sequel to her masterpiece about the Balkans, Black Lamb and Grey Falcon (1941). Although West never brought Survivors to completion, she left behind a series of extensive drafts and revisions that Bernard Schweizer has meticulously assembled and edited. The result is a welcome addition to the Rebecca West canon - a compelling travel memoir/history comparable to her best work, and one certain to gain readers and critical acclaim." West's narrative takes on Mexican history - the conquest by Spain, the Mexican Revolution, and the muralist movement - and explores the inner lives of such figures as Cortes, Montezuma, the Reclus brothers, Diego Rivera, Frida Kahlo, Dr. Atl, and Leon Trotsky. The author's concern is to distill meaning from the complex and often incoherent mass of data that characterizes the process of history. She draws fascinating connections between consciousness and material life, between subjective desire and social agency, and between art and politics. She sheds light on the revolutionary impulse and outlines a philosophy of history that acknowledges darkness yet documents the triumph of the human spirit over adversity.

FROM THE CRITICS

The New York Times

Survivors in Mexico is the book everyone who has ever written anything would love to write. Witty and entertaining, substantive and reflective, insightful and well documented, in splendid and uncommon prose, Rebecca West's travelogue -- meandering commentary and ruminations on Mexico from pre-Columbian civilization to traffic in the capital during the mid-1960's -- is a model of British sophistication and knack for seeing the other. — Jorge G. Castaneda

The Los Angeles Times

Survivors in Mexico is an astonishingly fertile book, full of sharp impressions and stimulating insights, whether West is pondering the question of why miners have been among the most mistreated of all laborers or speculating about the social and political effects of the Aztecs' lack of domesticated animals. Some of her notions may seem far-fetched, but what we are reading is more a working paper than a final draft. — Merle Rubin

The Washington Post