Critical Assessment “Today is All Souls' Day, the culmination of Mexico's Day of the Dead and the date on which, in 1938, the events of Malcolm Lowry's Under the Volcano take place. I came to the book knowing only its reputation as a masterpiece of English modernism. I left thinking it one of the greatest novels of the 20th century. Everyone should read it at least twice – Lowry thought several readings were necessary for its full meaning to "explode in the mind" – and 2 November should see Cuernavaca (to which Lowry restores its Nahuatl name of Quauhnahuac) overrun with [...]