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In Light of India is Paz's celebration of that country and his most personal work of prose to date. As in all of his essays, he brings poetic insight and voluminous knowledge to bear on the subject; the result is a series of fascinating discourses on India's landscape, culture, and history. "The Antipodes of Coming and Going" is a lyrical remembrance of Paz's days in India, evoking with astonishing clarity the sights, sounds, smells, and denizens of the subcontinent. "Religions, Castes, Languages" gives a survey of Indian history and its astonishing polyglot society. "A Project of Nationhood" is an examination of modern Indian politics, comparing the respective Islamic, Hindu, and Western civilizations through the course of history. "The Full and the Empty" is a brilliant exploration into what Paz calls the soul of India - its art, literature, music, and philosophy - and an uncompromising indictment of the self-centered materialism of Western society.

The Spanish title of 'In Light of India' is 'Vislumbres de la India', difficult to translate perhaps, meaning glimpses dimly seen, as in twilight. But, while it is true that the reader who knows India even a little is left wondering about certain omissions (what about the worship of the elephant god Ganesha, for instance, and the dreaded goddess Kali?), the essays in this ambitious book--translated by Eliot Weinberger, who also edited the book of poems and translated many of them--are certainly not 'glimpses'; they are the result of long experience and study, beginning with reminiscences of great charm but leading to disquisitions on India's history, its religions, philosophy, and such things as caste, Sanskrit erotic poetry, sculpture, and architecture. Mr. Paz also contrasts Mexico with India, and this in part is the theme of the title poem in 'A Tale of Two Gardens', where he evokes a romantic abandoned garden he had loved as a child and the garden he and his wife, Marie-Jose, had in Delhi. Gardens, trees, birds, and flowers recur often in his poems."

Marie Trevelyan, New York Times Book Review, 03/30/1997

"Paz the poet intoxicates, Paz the thinker ensure that that this is not at the cost of reason and fairness. he intoxicates with reason."

Agha Shahid Ali, Los Angeles Times Book Review, 04/30/1997

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