Happy birthday, novelist Malcolm Lowry

Top left: Lowry with first wife Jan Gabrial. Bottom left: Second wife, Margerie Bonner. Right: bottle of gin.

It is the birthday of English writer Malcolm Lowry (1909), whose novel Under the Volcano (1947) is considered one of the best novels of the 20th century. It tells the story of an alcoholic British consul stationed in a small town south of Mexico City in 1938. It begins on the Mexican Day of the Dead, November 2. It was based on his experiences with is first wife, Jan Gabrial, living in Cuernavaca, Mexico, in a vain attempt to save their marriage. Numerous publishers rejected the first version of the book. Lowry’s second wife, actress and writer Margerie Bonner, helped him revise it to the version that was finally published.