Under the Volcano

Against a background of war breaking out in Europe and the Mexican fiesta Day of Death, we are taken through one day in the life of Geoffrey Firmin, a British consul living in alcoholic disrepair and obscurity in a small southern Mexican town in 1939. The consul's self-destructive behaviour, perhaps a metaphor for a menaced civilization, is a source of perplexity and sadness to his nomadic, idealistic half-brother, Hugh, and his ex-wife, Yvonne, who has returned with hopes of healing Geoffrey and their broken marriage.

• depression
• mexico
• husband wife relationship
• bullfighting
• based on novel or book
• fascism
• half-brother
• alcoholism
• alcoholic
• drunk
• cuckold
• consul
• day of the dead
• 1930s
• foreign diplomat