A Nowhere for Vallejo

A Nowhere for Vallejo was first published in the UK 1972, and was a major staging post in the author's career, the penultimate volume to appear from a UK publisher before we issued the selected edition, Palenque, in the 1980s. The dramatic title sequence takes the form of an imaginary journey to the Inca empire, seen through the eyes of the first and last of the Inca emperors and of two great half-Inca writers, both of them exiles: Garcilaso de la Vega and César Vallejo. This sequence and 'Choices' were written in Guatemala during the summer of 1969 by Lake Atitlán where the author had carried out fieldwork as an anthropologist many years earlier. The book is completed by the 'October' sequence, which ends with the moving "in memoriam" poem 'Requiem pro duabus filiis Israel'.