De Alemania.

First edition and only edition, number 533 of 3,000 copies, of Carrión's second book, a collection of six short stories employing the interior monologue, by "perhaps Mexico's most important conceptual artist" (Torre). Uncommon on the market: we were unable to trace any other copies for sale or at auction.

Ulises Carrión (1941-1989) wrote De Alemania after his language and literature studies in France and Germany. In 1972, Carrión left Mexico and moved to Amsterdam, where he founded the legendary Other Books and So bookstore and event space. He remains best known for his decisive role in defining and conceptualising the artistic genre artists' book through his manifest The New Art of Making Books (1975), "in which he extols the virtues of the book as a three-dimensional medium and convincingly refutes the idea of its being an accidental container of literature: 'A book is not a case of words, nor a bag of words, nor a bearer of words.' Arguing that if in the 'old art the writer writes texts in the new art the writer makes books,' Carrión urged writers and artists to take advantage of the possibilities that new printing technologies such as the mimeograph had to offer, to bypass the market, and to form alternate distribution networks by fostering communities of like-minded practitioners" (Torre).