Malcolm Lowry's Under the Volcano - one of my all-time favourites.
I know there is Carlos Fuentes and his Death of Artemio Cruz, for example.
Where else can I learn about Mexico - its many wars in history, its overpopulated cities, its haciendas.
I've seen movies: The Old Gringo about Ambrose Bierce, All the Pretty Horses, Zorro. And there is a recent movie about Ciudad Juarez with top actors.
In older American novels young people often went to Tijuana to "have some fun" (e.g. McMurtry's Last Picture Show).

Stones for Ybarra by Harriet Doerr is good. she is a US who has lived in Mexico.
Caramelo Sandra Cisneros a Mexican-American & a good writer. The wind that swept Mexico Anita Brenner Best book in English on Mexican revolution.
Pedro Paramo Juan Rulfo If you read Spanish, skip the translations. also Los de Abajo Mariano Azuelo.
Distant Neighbors Alan Riding - history of relations between US & Mexico 1984
Like water for Chocolate Laura Esquivel
Bernal Diaz memoirs on the conquest of the Aztec's is a classic. Translations vary, better in Spanish.
Elena Poniatowska La Noche de Tlateloco about the student uprisings in 1968
Fuerte es el silencio is also good. Yesterday's train by Terry Pindell 1997

(Sorry if this isn't OK - My cat is lying on part of my keyboard & I keep trying to shove her over}

The Wind that swept Mexico

Stones for Ybarra Harriet Doerr is good she's from US but knows Mexico
Caramel Sandra Cisneros
Mexican in US a good writer
Bordering on Chaos problems of present day Mexico by Andres Oppenheimer c.1996
The Wind that swept Mexico Anita Brenner best work

I recently read and loved The Savage Detectives, set in Mexico City in the 1970s.

Carlos Fuentes's Christopher Unborn.

I also enjoyed Jorge Ibarguengoitia's Two Crimes.

I strongly second emaestra's recommendation of Bolano's The Savage Detectives.

And it's not a novel, but Octavio Paz's The Labyrinth of Solitude seem to me essential.

Palinuro of Mexico by Fernando del Paso is an excellent Joycean work set in Mexico. I also ditto Hariett Doerr's books: Stones For Ibarra and Consider This Senora.

Message edited by its author, Aug 24, 2008, 9:06pm.

The Border Trilogy By Cormac McCarthy.

The Treasure of the Sierra Madre by B. Traven

The Dead Girls is a pretty good novel, in an almost documentary style, about a series of prostitute murders in a small town in the 1950's.

As a Graham Greene fan, I would have to mention The Power and the Glory and its nonfiction analogue, The Lawless Roads.

(#1: Not to quibble, but I doubt McMurtry's Texas teenagers visited Tijuana - that would have been quite a drive! I assume they would have hit Juarez, Matamoros, or some such place.)

I think it was Ciudad Acuna also known as "Boys Town" now that you mention it.

"The Treasure of the Sierra Madre" by B. Traven is a great classic. It explores human relationships and how greed affect them.

It is a common theme of how greed destroys the soul but it is masterfully done.

Of course there is the delightful added mystery that no one knows who B, Traven was if he ever did exist at all.

It's been pretty well established that Traven was a pseudonym of a German living in Mexico named Marut. I believe he had a fairly radical past, which hastened his departure from Germany and contributed to his secrecy. A little old man with a remarkable resemblance to the younger Marut used to show up as Traven's "emissary" while Huston was filming the movie in Mexico. He would get nervous and hide his face whenever anyone pulled out a camera (which must have happened quite often on a film set).

For more, see The Man Who Was B. Traven. There are probably more recent studies as well.

The Death Ship, while having nothing to do with Mexico, is another Traven classic.

makifat-

I agree. I gave "Death Ship" four stars.

I really liked Esperanza Rising by Pam Munoz Ryan, but it is YA.

Top titles from Nexos magazine's (Apr 2007) survey of the best Mexican novels of the past 30 yrs. A FEW of these are translated to English.

1. Noticias del imperio, de Fernando del Paso
2. Las batallas en el desierto, de José Emilio Pacheco
3. Crónica de la intervención, Juan García Ponce
4. Elsinore: un cuaderno, de Salvador Elizondo
4. El desfile del amor, de Sergio Pitol
5. Porque parece mentira la verdad nunca se sabe, de Daniel Sada
5. La guerra de Galio, de Héctor Aguilar Camín
6. En busca de Klingsor, de Jorge Volpi
7. Dos crímenes, de Jorge Ibargüengoitia
8. El testigo, de Juan Villoro
9. Lodo, de Guillermo Fadanelli

For really learning abt culture/history, among the best I've found (and friends who've read them concur) are In the Shadow of the Angel by Kathryn Blair (biography but reads like an amazing novel), and Lovesick by Angeles Mastretta.

I recommend anything by Ibarguengoitia; often laugh-out-loud funny, wish more were translated. Also José Agustín, Sealtiel Alatriste, Paco Ignacio Taibo II.

I also recommend The Savage Detectives (Bolaños was Chilean, but it does indeed capture real-life aspects of Mexico City.)

I enjoyed In Search of Klingsor, but although it is by a Mexican, I don't think it really qualifies as a novel about Mexico. And how could I have forgotten Taibo? His series of mysteries is not to be missed.

Having enjoyed his blog I suspect David Lida's new First Stop in the New World: Mexico City, the Capital of the 21st Century should be tremendous (but it is not, of course, a novel).

A novel laid in Mexico, but not written by a Mexican is The Zigzag Way by Anita Desai. It features both English-speaking and Mexican characters and is very affecting.