Because no one can express the poet better than the poet himself, the book's translator, Saleh Almani, explains in the introduction the motives that encouraged Neruda to write Canto General (1928-1950). Neruda says: 'When I was living in isolation, away from people, and seeking to highlight a great comprehensive unity for the world I wanted to express, I wrote my most untamed and expansive book: Canto General. This book was the culmination of my ambitious attempt. It is as vast as a large piece of time, and it has many shadows and lights at the same time, because I aimed to encompass the wide space in which lives and peoples move, grow, work, and fade (...) The poet must be, to some extent, a historian of his time, and history should not be essence, nor purity, nor refinement and civility, but rather it should be rugged, dusty, rainy, and daily... It must contain the miserable footprints of the passing days, and work with human's distress and sighs (...).'

• Publisher: Dar Al Mada - Beirut
• Edition: 2
• Year of Publication: 2014
• Pages: 371
• Parts: 1
• Binding: Paperback
• Paper Type: Recycled
• Printing Colors: Monochrome
• ISBN: 9782843056055