Apocalyptic, lyrical, and erotically charged, Sor Juana or the Breath of Heaven is a novel of genius, obsession, and mystery surrounding the Baroque-era Mexican nun, Sor Juana In#65533;s de la Cruz. When she died in 1695, she was arguably the greatest writer working in any European tongue, though she never lived outside her native Mexico. Juana was a child prodigy whose beauty and wit provoked a sensation at the vice-regal court in Mexico City. At nineteen, though still a royal favorite, she chose to enter a convent. In the twenty years that followed, Juana created plays, theological arguments, and graceful, often sensuous poetry -- insisting upon a life of the mind for women, while jousting with the enforcers of the Inquisition. Then, at forty, Juana signed a vow of silence in her own blood, five years before succumbing to plague. This book plumbs the mystery of why such a gifted writer silenced herself. In his remarkable debut, Anderson unfolds three intimate journeys: a great poet's withdrawal from the world; a man's forced march to self-knowledge; and a mystic's pilgrimage into modern Mexico, where the bones of the past continually intrude into a present built on the ruins of the vanquished.