A Visit to Don Otavio

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— trapped in a broiling stationary train, or in a bus with a dead fish 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 theatricality of a Mexican neighbourhood.