Ecos de México
With its rich history, unique cultural identity, and breathtaking landscapes, Mexico has inspired some unforgettable stories.
This collection of books set in Mexico includes a sweeping family saga, a gothic horror, a page-turning historical novel, and a powerful true story of a mother’s quest for justice.
Click on the titles to borrow them and be transported to the land of the Sun.
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1. The Savage Detectives - Roberto Bolaño
New Year's Eve 1975, Mexico City. Two hunted men leave town in a hurry, on the desert-bound trail of a vanished poet.
Spanning two decades and crossing continents, theirs is a remarkable quest through a darkening universe - our own. It is a journey told and shared by a generation of lovers, rebels and readers, whose testimonies are woven together into one of the most dazzling Latin American novels of the twentieth century.
2. The Hacienda - Isabel Cañas
Hacienda San Isidro was meant to be Beatriz’s haven, her salvation from an oppressive life with her uncle and his vicious wife. When Don Rodolfo Solórzano proposed, Beatriz dreamed only of the security his estate in the countryside would provide, ignoring the rumours surrounding his first wife’s demise and his sinister allegiances. She will have her own home again, no matter the price.
But the house has ideas of its own. Visions and voices claw at Beatriz, stealing her sleep, and the weight of invisible eyes follows her every move. Deep in her bones, Beatriz knows—something is wrong with San Isidro.
Desperate for help, she turns to the young priest, Padre Andrés. Handsome and sympathetic, he seems like Beatriz’s only hope. But as their passions rise and the walls close in around Beatriz, the weight of secrets everyone is carrying may lead them all to their doom.
3. Fear is Just a Word – Azam Ahmed
Fear is Just a Word begins on an international bridge between Mexico and the United States, as fifty-six-year-old Miriam Rodriguez stalks one of the men she believes was involved in the murder of her daughter Karen. He is her target number eleven, a member of the drug cartel that has terrorised and controlled what was once Miriam's quiet hometown of San Fernando, Mexico, almost one hundred miles from the US border. Having dyed her hair red as a disguise, Miriam watches, waits, and then orchestrates the arrest of this man, exacting her own revenge.
Woven into this deeply researched, moving account is the story of how cartels built their power in Mexico, escalated the use of violence, and kidnapped and murdered tens of thousands. Karen was just one of the many people who disappeared, and Miriam, a brilliant, strategic and fearless woman, begged for help from the authorities and paid ransom money she could not afford in hopes of saving her daughter. When that failed, she began a crusade to track down Karen's killers and help other victimised families.
What can a person do when their country and the town where they have grown up become unrecognisable, suddenly places of violence and fear? Azam Ahmed tells the mesmerising story of a brave and brilliant woman determined to find out what happened to her daughter, and to see that the criminals who murdered her were punished. Fear is Just a Word is an unforgettable and moving portrait of a woman, a town and a country, and of what can happen when violent forces drive people to seek justice on their own.
4. The Lacuna – Barbara Kingsolver
Born in America and raised in Mexico, Harrison Shepherd is a liability to his social-climbing flapper mother, Salome. When he starts work in the household of Mexican artists Diego Rivera and Frida Kahlo - where the Bolshevik leader, Lev Trotsky, is also being harboured as a political exile - he inadvertently casts his lot with art, communism and revolution.
A compulsive diarist, he records and relates his colourful experiences of life with Diego Rivera, Frida Kahlo and Trotsky in the midst of the Mexican revolution. A violent upheaval sends him back to America; but political winds continue to throw him between north and south, in a plot that turns many times on the unspeakable breach - the lacuna - between truth and public presumption.
5. Under the Volcano – Malcolm Lowry
It is the fiesta 'Day of the Dead' in the small Mexican town of Quauhnahuac. In the shadow of the volcano, ragged children beg coins to buy skulls made of chocolate, ugly pariah dogs roam the streets and Geoffrey Firmin - ex-consul, ex-husband, an alcoholic and a ruined man - is living out the last day of his life.
Drowning himself in mescal while his former wife and half-brother look on, powerless to help him, the consul has become an enduring tragic figure. As the day wears on, it becomes apparent that Geoffrey must die. It is his only escape from a world he cannot understand. His story, the image of one man's agonised journey towards Calvary, became a prophetic book for a whole generation.
6. The Daughter of Doctor Moreau - Silvia Moreno-Garcia
Carlota Moreau: A young woman, growing up in a distant and luxuriant estate, safe from the conflict and strife of the Yucatan peninsula, the only daughter of a genius - or a madman.
Montgomery Laughton: A melancholic overseer with a tragic past and a propensity for alcohol, an outcast who assists Dr Moreau with his scientific experiments, which are financed by the Lizaldes, owners of magnificent haciendas with plentiful coffers.
The hybrids: The fruits of the Doctor's labour, destined to blindly obey their creator while they remain in the shadows, are a motley group of part-human, part-animal monstrosities.
All of them are living in a perfectly balanced and static world which is jolted by the abrupt arrival of Eduardo Lizalde, the charming and careless son of Doctor Moreau's patron - who will, unwittingly, begin a dangerous chain-reaction. For Moreau keeps secrets, Carlota has questions, and in the sweltering heat of the jungle passions may ignite.
7. The Power and the Glory – Graham Greene (CD audiobook)
In a poor, remote section of southern Mexico, the paramilitary group, the Red Shirts have taken control. God has been outlawed, and the priests have been systematically hunted down and killed. Now, the last priest is on the run. Too human for heroism, too humble for martyrdom, the nameless little worldly "whiskey priest" is nevertheless impelled toward his squalid Calvary as much by his own compassion for humanity as by the efforts of his pursuers.
In his introduction, John Updike calls The Power and the Glory, "Graham Greene's masterpiece…. The energy and grandeur of his finest novel derive from the will toward compassion, an ideal communism even more Christian than Communist."
8. Like Water for Chocolate – Laura Esquivel
The number one bestseller in Mexico and America for almost two years, and subsequently a bestseller around the world, Like Water For Chocolate is a romantic, poignant tale, touched with moments of magic, graphic earthiness, bittersweet wit - and recipes.
A sumptuous feast of a novel, it relates the bizarre history of the all-female De La Garza family. Tita, the youngest daughter of the house, has been forbidden to marry, condemned by Mexican tradition to look after her mother until she dies. But Tita falls in love with Pedro, and he is seduced by the magical food she cooks. In desperation Pedro marries her sister Rosaura so that he can stay close to her.
For the next twenty-two years Tita and Pedro are forced to circle each other in unconsummated passion. Only a freakish chain of tragedies, bad luck and fate finally reunite them against all the odds.
9. The Last Emperor of Mexico – Edward Shawcross
In 1864, a young Austrian archduke by the name of Maximilian crossed the Atlantic to assume a faraway throne.
He had been lured into the voyage by a duplicitous Napoleon III. Keen to spread his own interests abroad, the French emperor had promised Maximilian a hero's welcome.
Instead, he walked into a bloody guerrilla war. With a head full of impractical ideals - and a penchant for pomp and butterflies - the new 'emperor' was singularly ill-equipped for what lay in store. This is the vivid history of this barely known, barely believable episode - a bloody tragedy of operatic proportions, the effects of which would be felt into the twentieth century and beyond.
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