Under the Volcano Books

01/09/2026

Celebrating International Day for People of African Descent 📚✨
​Literature has always been a space for reclaiming history, celebrating heritage, and imagining different futures. Today, as the world honors the profound contributions of people of African descent, we’re highlighting stories and voices across the global diaspora that push boundaries, spark conversation, and redefine storytelling.
​From fiction to poetry that shaped social commentary, these authors remind us that literature is both a mirror and a tool for change.
​📖 On our shelves:
​Sister Outsider — Audre Lorde
​Send us a DM to reserve your copy or visit us at the shop! ☕✨
​What book by a Black or Afro-descendant writer has left the biggest mark on you? Tell us below! 👇
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30/08/2026

HAPPY BIRTHDAY TO MARY SHELLEY! ⚡📖

​On August 30, 1797, one of literature’s most visionary minds was born. Writing Frankenstein; or, The Modern Prometheus at just 18 years old during a rainy summer in Lake Geneva, Mary Shelley didn’t just write a gothic novel—she birthed the modern science fiction genre.

​Beyond her iconic creature, Shelley crafted haunting tales of isolation, passion, and apocalyptic futures, raising deep questions about scientific ethics, creation, and identity.

​✨Looking to celebrate her legacy?

We currently have a very special copy of Frankenstein featuring the original 1818 text (Broadview Edition)! Edited by D.L. Macdonald and Kathleen Scherf, this volume includes historical documents, early reviews, and scholarly notes.

​We also have other Gothic classics waiting for you. Drop by the bookstore to buy your own copy or send us a DM to put one on hold! 🕯️🖤

​Which of Mary Shelley’s themes left the biggest mark on you? Tell us in the comments! 👇

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28/08/2026

This week’s treasures at Under the Volcano Books bring together art, literature, and cultural history.📚✨

Discover Frida Kahlo’s Month in Paris: A Friendship with Mary Reynolds, an intimate look at Kahlo’s time in Paris and her connection to the Surrealist circle, alongside The Norton Anthology of World Literature, a wide-ranging collection of essential texts from literary traditions around the world.🖼️🌍

Two very different books, each offering a remarkable journey through art, history, and literature. Available now at the bookstore.

28/08/2026

This week’s treasures at Under the Volcano Books bring together art, literature, and cultural history.📚✨

Discover Frida Kahlo’s Month in Paris: A Friendship with Mary Reynolds, an intimate look at Kahlo’s time in Paris and her connection to the Surrealist circle, alongside The Norton Anthology of World Literature, a wide-ranging collection of essential texts from literary traditions around the world.🖼️🌎

Two very different books, each offering a remarkable journey through art, history, and literature. Available now at the bookstore.

26/08/2026

On this day, we remember Guillaume Apollinaire, whose poetry and imagination helped redefine the possibilities of modern literature.
A writer who embraced experimentation, artistic freedom, and the changing spirit of his time, Apollinaire remains an enduring presence in literary history.

26/08/2026

IN MEMORIAM: DOLLY PARTON (1946–2026) 🕊️✨📚

​Today, the world mourns the loss of a legend. While widely celebrated as the Queen of Country Music, at Under the Volcano Books we also honor her extraordinary legacy as an advocate for literacy and education.

​Through her Imagination Library, Dolly transformed millions of young lives by gifting books to children around the globe—fostering a love for reading across generations.

​Her voice, generosity, and commitment to storytelling leave a mark on music and literature alike. Rest in peace, Dolly. 📖

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25/08/2026

24/08/2026

On the night of 22–23 August 1791, enslaved people in Saint-Domingue—present-day Haiti—rose against the colonial system that held them captive. Their uprising became a decisive chapter in the Haitian Revolution and in the wider struggle for abolition.
The International Day for the Remembrance of the Slave Trade and its Abolition asks us not only to remember the millions of lives subjected to enslavement, but also to confront the systems, inequalities and racial hierarchies that survived its formal abolition.
Books help keep that history from becoming distant or abstract. They preserve testimony, restore individual lives to the historical record, and trace the ways slavery’s legacy continues to shape culture, housing, wealth and belonging.
To mark the day, we have gathered six works from our shelves that approach this history and its afterlives through autobiography, collected testimony, fiction, poetry and social history:
• Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass — Frederick Douglass
• The Classic Slave Narratives — edited and introduced by Henry Louis Gates Jr.
• Just Action: How to Challenge Segregation Enacted Under the Color of Law — Richard Rothstein and Leah Rothstein
• The Langston Hughes Reader — Langston Hughes
• The Keepers of the House — Shirley Ann Grau
• The Slave Girl — Buchi Emecheta
Together, these books remind us that remembrance is not a passive act. It requires us to listen to the voices that history tried to silence—and to recognize how the past continues to inhabit the present.
Which books have most deepened your understanding of slavery and its enduring legacy?
UnderTheVolcanoBooks MexicoCityBookstore

21/08/2026

A COMPANION TO POSTCOLONIAL LITERARURE 🌾📜

✨ On our shelves: A rare 1st Edition copy of Sargasso Sea (1966), featuring the original jacket artwork!

​Jean Rhys’s Wide Sargasso Sea is a haunting response to Charlotte Brontë’s Jane Eyre. Giving a voice to Antoinette Cosway (famously known as Bertha Mason, the ‘madwoman in the attic’), Rhys crafts a narrative set against the vivid backdrop of the 19th-century Caribbean. Through themes of displacement, imperial dominance, and madness, this novel completely reshapes how we read Victorian literature.

✨ On our shelves: A beautifully preserved 1st US Edition (1960) of Shadows on the Grass published by Random House, with its original vintage dust jacket.

​Two decades after the publication of Out of Africa, Karen Blixen (writing under her pen name, Isak Dinesen) returned to her memories of East Africa in Shadows on the Grass (1960). Composed of four stories, this collection reflects on the friendships, landscapes, and cultural encounters that shaped her time managing a coffee plantation in the Ngong Hills. It’s a personal reflection on memory, loss, and human connection.

​Drop by the shop to take a look or send us a DM to hold these copies! ☕📚

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