Under the Volcano Books

If you’ve tried to sell books lately in the United States, you know the Kindle has made them virtually worthless. But in Mexico City, where English books are scarce – and when available, prohibitively expensive for the average person – your books are worth more than just money.

We can always use copies of our Hot 7:

‘The Savage Detectives’ by Roberto Bolaño, ‘Lolita’ by Vladimir Nabokov, ‘The Great Gatsby’ by F. Scott Fitzgerald, ‘Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas’ by Hunter S. Thompson, ‘Fairy Tales’ by the Brothers Grimm, and Homer’s ‘The Iliad’ and ‘The Odyssey’, Fagles and Fitzgerald translations…

and anything and everything by:

Jack Kerouac, Roberto Bolaño, David Foster Wallace, Philip Hensher, Lorrie Moore, James Baldwin, Denis Johnson, George W.S. Trow, Haruki Murakami, Cormac McCarthy, William Gaddis, Thomas Pynchon, William T. Vollmann, Kurt Cobain, Herman Melville, Philip K. Dick, William Blake, Ezra Pound, Hermann Hesse, William S. Burroughs, Yukio Mishima, Jonathan Lethem, Derrick Jensen, Ernest Hemingway, Emily Dickinson, William Styron, Joan Didion, Ralph Ellison, W.G. Sebald, Kurt Vonnegut, Patrick Susskind, Friedrich Nietzche, Chris Ware, Daniel Clowes, F. Scott Fitzgerald, Charles Bukowski, Elizabeth Bishop, Robert Lowell, Franz Kafka, Albert Camus, Fyodor Dostoevski, J.G. Ballard, Sam Lipsyte, Christopher Alexander, Alex Ross, Colson Whitehead, D.B.C. Pierre, Michel Houellebecq, Marcel Proust, Leo Tolstoy, Sapphire, Salman Rushdie, Robert Graves, George MacDonald Fraser, Anne Carson, Gore Vidal, Soseki Natsume, Yasunari Kawabata, H.P. Lovecraft, T.S. Eliot, W.H. Auden…

… but there are books we want we don’t know yet that we want. These are the books you love, and want to pass on to others to discover.

As a hybrid of a literary bookstore and an educational institution we survive by the skin of our teeth, and would greatly appreciate gifts postage-paid. We understand, however, not everyone can swing that, and if you have some of the titles or authors listed above, arrangements can be made through our account with USPS.

INSTRUCTIONS:

1. Because of Mexican tax law, we need to prove our books are donated. So please include a letter with your books certifying ‘To Whom it May Concern’ that this quantity of books (__) is a donation, dated and signed with a return address.
2. Pack books flat or spine-down to FILL a sturdy box (we find file boxes to be best) include your donor certification letter, and secure the box with packing tape.
3. Affix our address: Under the Volcano Books, Cerrada Chiapas 40-C, Col. Roma Norte, Del. Cuauhtémoc, Distrito Federal, MEXICO 06700
4. Mail via USPS, Fed Ex, or DHL: be sure to ask for media mail or book rate.
5. Enjoy our deepest thanks and know you have helped to build a growing institution of cultural significance. Visit us soon!