The Monkey Grammarian by Octavio Paz

Hanuman, the red-faced monkey chief and ninth grammarian of Hindu mythology, is the protagonist of this dazzling narrative--a mind-journey to the temple of Galta in India and the occasion for Octavio Paz to explore the nature of naming and knowing, time and reality, and fixity and decay.

Written while Paz was the Mexican ambassador to India, this dazzling mind-journey to the temple city of Galta becomes the occasion for the celebratel Mexican poet and philosopher to explore the eternally intriguing question: is language, the concept of grammar, God-given or did man invent it on his own with powers borrowed from the divine realm?

Genre: literary fiction