The history of the intellectual fascination between France and the Hispanic world, particularly Mexico, is almost as long as the origin of both territories. That fascination, when it has arisen from the darkest part of our minds, has generated wars, invasions, oppression, murders. But it has also generated much of the light that guides both cultures: the words that forged our literary, philosophical, and political imaginary; the sound of musical pieces, previously unheard of; the still and moving images that revealed new worlds to us. And, also, two models of life, diametrically different and, therefore, complementary: one governed by passion, and the other by reason. Like light and darkness, the fate of France and Mexico seem to be linked forever. In this book, I'm not from here nor am I from there, Philippe Ollé-Laprune tells this story and, by telling it, he becomes one of his links and begins to be part of it.

This volume brings together the work of twenty years of writing: articles, prefaces, introductions to anthologies, panoramas, conferences, draw not the chaos of a life, not the dispersion, but the portrait and obsessions of a reader, of one of the readers sharpest of French letters. Together with him, we can tour the Paris of the surrealists, but also the lesser-known Paris of César Moro or Severo Sarduy; Rubén Darío's Central America; Martinique and the battle for the decolonization and dignity of the black peoples by Aimé Césaire; the imaginary territories of some of the most captivating narrators of our language: Sergio Pitol, Daniel Sada, Juan Villoro, Mario Bellatin. The diversity of readings and surprises that this book offers us is identical to that which could be provided by a trip, for a century and a half, throughout the entire American and European continents. Because this volume is the portrait not only of a reader, but the log of a traveler who considers literature as food for the spirit to be more alive and better, as an act of rejection and rebellion, as an uprising against injustice of the human condition. It is the diary of an emigrant, an exile, an explorer, who seeks a territory where he can finally find peace, rest, serenity, the joy that the world constantly denies us. And that territory is here, enclosed in this book, and it's called literature. Whoever opens it and looks for the same thing will not regret it and, during the journey through these pages, he will find a way to happiness.