'Itinerary' is the intellectual autobiography and testament of one of the grandest and most influential Spanish-language writers of the twentieth century. The original text was written specially to serve as an introduction to the writer's final collected works.

Paz, who died in 1998, was one of those poets with a large parallel oeuvre in prose. He wrote major texts on the culture and history of his native Mexico, on world politics, on eastern religion and many other topics.

In 'Itinerary', he traces the parabola of his intellectual journey from youthful Trotskyism and involvement in the Spanish Civil War - via surrealism, revolt and liberal socialism a la Orwell - to his later more conservative critique of left-wing radicalism.

winner of the Nobel Prize for Literature 1990

translation and afterword by Jason Wilson
foreword by Charles Tomlinson

'Every poem is an attemptbto reconcile history and poetry for the benefit of poetry'. - Octavio Paz