A Unique Way to Travel Mexico: “Sun, Stones and Shadows”

Imagination and literature add an effective and distinctive dimension to traveling. Through literature, we are able to discover the landscape, the traditions, the history, the way of life, the soul of a country. And a literary jewel is waiting to help us discover Mexico through 20 short stories written by some of the most prolific Mexican authors of the twentieth century.

In this thorough compilation, Octavio Paz, Juan Rulfo, Elena Garro and Carlos Fuentes –among others- depict the different faces of Mexico; a multifaceted country that offers a rich mosaic for diverse interests and desires, from pre-Hispanic and native Mexico, the devoted and colonial country, to the most cosmopolitan cities.

Through these stories, we sense a country where present and past intertwined in a magical harmony, a country of devoted people where religion and superstition stand together and co-exist in unthinkable accordance, where churches raise on top of ancient pre-Hispanic temples, synchronism of many elements, from the gastronomy, to crafts and their general way of life.

The stories are as universal and global as the writers, but they express the Mexican imagination, masterpieces in their modernity, universal yet regional. The original stories are in Spanish, but there is an English-language version, the only Mexican book to be part of the Big Read program in the United States, a governmental initiative to promote reading.

So if you haven’t yet traveled to Mexico, or even if you have, visited it through “Sun, Stones and Shadows” edited by Jorge F. Hernandez.