Before returning to the Old World after World War II, Sybille Bedford resolved to see something more of the New. "I had a great longing to move," she said, "to hear another language, eat new food, to be in a country with a long nasty history in the past and as little present history as possible." And so she set out for Mexico—and, incidentally, to write what Bruce Chatwin called the best travel book of the twentieth century.