 A Visit to Don Otavio
Sybille Bedford
A Mexican odyssey Pages: 320
Format: Paperback
ISBN: 0 907871 87 9
Area of interest: Mexico
Genre: Autobiography, Travel Date of first publication: 1953
Eland publication date: June 6, 2002
Price: £12.99
Mexico, through the eyes of Sybille Bedford is a country of passion and paradox: arid desert and shrieking jungle, harsh sun and deep shadow, violence and sentimentality. In her frank descriptions of the horrors of travel - through bug-infested jungle, trapped in a broiling stationary train, or in a bus with a dead fish slapping against her face - she gains our trust.
But it is the charmed world of Don Otavio which steals our imagination. He is, she says, "one of the kindest men I ever met". She stays in his crumbling ancestral mansion, living a life of provincial ease and observing with glee the intense life of a Mexican neighbourhood.
biography of Sybille Bedford
extract from A Visit to Don Otavio
Click here for The New York Times' short review
Click here for Bruce Chatwin's short review
Click here for The New Yorker's review
"Perceptive, lively, aware of the significance of trifles, and a fine writer. Applied to a beautiful, various, and still inscrutable country, these talents yield a singularly delightful result."
The Times
"Don Otavio is exactly what a travel book should be: an unpacking of all one's moral, intellectual and esthetic luggage in a foreign place. Mrs. Bedford has an opinion – one worth having – about everything. Naturally, she has many prejudices, for prejudice is the vehicle of the British literary traveler, and long may it wave."
Anatole Broyard, New York Times
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