A tale of two gardens

A Tale of Two Gardens collects the poetry from over 40 years of Nobel Prize winner Octavio Paz's many and various commitments to India - as Mexican ambassador, student of Indian philosophy, and above all, as poet. Despite having written many acclaimed non-fiction books on the region, he has always considered those writings to be footnotes to the poems. From the long work "Mutra," written in 1952 and accompanied here by a new commentary by the author, to the celebrated poems of East Slope, and his recent adaptations from the classical Sanskrit, Paz scripts his India with a mixture of deft sensualism and hands-on politics.