This novel is set in Mexico in the 1920s. Kate Leslie, an Irish widow travelling abroad, grows weary of European life and is drawn into the country's landscape and its people. She encounters a movement that seeks to revive ancient Aztec gods as a spiritual and political force, led by two powerful men. Lawrence uses the story to explore religion, renewal, nationhood and the place of a modern woman amid older ways of belief. It is an ambitious and controversial book, admired for its atmosphere and criticised for some of its ideas.
Quotes
The universe is a nest of dragons, with a perfectly unfathomable life-mystery at the centre of it.