The most wonderful tale of a journey through Mexico after World War II, the first book of the marvelous Sybille Bedford, originally published (in a somewhat different form) in 1953. Full of astute detail and novelistic flourishes, the book is in the spirit of Fanny Calderon de la Barca, who Bedford occasionally quotes. The cosmopolitan narrator (traveling with her friend) take in Mexico City and places like Cuernavaca, Patzcuaro, Guadalajara, Guanajuato, Puebla -- and the charming title character's hacienda. The publication of this classic (called the most perfect travel book of the 20th century by Bruce Chatwin) follows on the heels of Counterpoint's reissue of Bedford's novels. Her prose is dazzling.  (MEX126, $16.00)