A Nowhere for Vallejo

A Nowhere for Vallejo was first published in New York in 1971, and in London in 1972, with the material collected in it dating back to 1969. A major staging post in the author's career, it remains one of Nathaniel Tarn's most significant publications from the 1970s. The dramatic title sequence takes the form of an imaginary journey to the Inca empire, seen through the eyes of the first and last of the Inca emperors and of two great half-Inca writers, both exiles: Garcilaso de la Vega and Cesar Vallejo. This sequence and 'Choices' were written in Guatemala during the summer of 1969 by Lake Atitlan where the author had carried out fieldwork as an anthropologist many years earlier. The book is completed by the 'October' sequence, which ends with the moving in memoriam poem 'Requiem pro duabus filiis Israel'.