The Labyrinth of Solitude

by Octavio Paz

"One of the major poets of our time here probes and defines Mexican character and culture in a series of essays. Silence, irony, the formalization of social life -- these are the masks that permit the Mexican to conceal his personality. Far more than an interpretation of his own country alone, this book is also a penetrating commentary on the plight of Latin America today as a whole, an enlightening view of the North American -- "who wanders in an abstract world of machines, fellow citizens, and...