Malcolm Lowry's life was shaped by his enthrallment to drink and most of it was spent on spectacular benders, in drying-out clinics where he attempted fruitlessly to beat his addiction or in long periods of exile and isolation in Mexico, Canada and the USA when he strove to turn his experiences into fiction. Apart from Ultramarine, which appeared soon after he graduated from Cambridge, Lowry published only one novel in his lifetime but that book is one of the most powerful and original works of English fiction in the 20th century. Under the Volcano traces the last 24 hours in the life of Geoffrey Firmin. Firmin, a terminally alcoholic ex-British consul living in a small Mexican town, is witness to his own destruction through drink, despair and the haunting power of his memories. Set on the festival of the Day of the Dead, the book records the via dolorosa that is Firmin's journey to his own death. His ex-wife, Yvonne, and his half-brother, Hugh, look on powerlessly as he soaks in liquor and self-castigation. They labor under their own burdens of guilt (the two had an affair in the past and Hugh despises himself for his unwillingness to commit himself to the great political struggles of the times) and ultimately they are unable to save either Firmin or themselves. As the macabre festival celebrating death swirls around them and fascist thugs gather in the Mexican streets, the three lost English souls are forced to face their fates. Under the Volcano is a remarkable achievement. Out of the messy circumstances of his own addiction, Lowry fashions a semi-autobiographical narrative that becomes symbolic of much more than just one man's troubled descent into a hell of his own making. Firmin's tragedy becomes the tragedy of everyone caught up in the suffering, violence and loneliness of the modern world.

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