The Tree Within

In the 1960s the Mexican poet Octavio Paz came to India as his country's ambassador, and the posting changed his life. The Tree Within tells the story of his passionate attachment to the country. Paz travelled widely, absorbed its cultural life and contemplative traditions, and formed deep friendships with some of India's finest minds. Several of his most inspired poems and essays came out of these years. India was also where he met the love of his life and went through what he himself called a second birth. Indranil Chakravarty follows this inner journey through a wide range of sources: multilingual archives, declassified diplomatic files, personal letters and intimate interviews. The book combines biography, cultural history and literary criticism. It presents the meeting of India and one of the twentieth century's great writers as a lasting creative exchange, and it brings back to life the artistic and literary circles in which Paz moved.