Spain in Mind

Book excerpt: This spellbinding literary travel guide gathers poetry, nonfiction, and fiction about Spain by forty English and American writers. Here are letters and memoirs from Lord Byron, Edith Wharton, and Henry James; a poem about Picasso by E. E. Cummings; and a comic tale by Anthony Trollope in which two Englishmen mistake a Spanish duke for a bullfighter. W. H. Auden, George Orwell, and Langston Hughes record their experiences in the Spanish Civil War, Ernest Hemingway takes on bullfighting, Richard Wright is beguiled by gypsy flamenco dancers, and Calvin Trillin pursues an obsession with Spanish peppers. From Chris Stewart’s memoir of his rural retreat in Driving Over Lemons to Barbara Kingsolver’s idyllic portrait of the Canary Islands in “Where the Map Stopped,” the glimpses of another world in Spain in Mind will enchant you. From the Trade Paperback edition.