Men of Maize - by Miguel Ángel Asturias (Paperback)

About the Book

"Deep in the mountain forests of Guatemala, a community of indigenous Mayans-the "men of maize"-serves as stewards to sacred corn crops. When outsiders encroach on their territory and threaten to abuse the fertile land, they enter a bloody struggle to protect their way of life. This 75th anniversary edition of Nobel Prize Winner Miguel âAngel Asturias's epic tale of the collision of capitalist exploitation and indigenous wisdom features a new introduction and a foreword by Pulitzer Prize winner Hâector Tobar"--

Book Synopsis

A novel whose time has come: the Nobel Prize-winning author of Mr. President's visionary epic of ecological devastation, capitalist exploitation, and Indigenous wisdom, now available again for its 75th anniversary with a new introduction and with a foreword by Pulitzer Prize winner Héctor Tobar

A Penguin Classic

Deep in the mountain forests of Guatemala, a community of Indigenous Mayans--the "men of maize"--serves as stewards to sacred corn crops. When profiteering outsiders encroach on their territory and threaten to abuse the fertile land, they enter a bloody struggle to protect their way of life. Blurring the lines between history and mythology, Nobel Prize winner Miguel Ángel Asturias's lush, dream-like work offers a prescient warning against the loss of ancestral wisdom and the environmental destruction set in motion by colonial oppression and capitalist greed.

For more than seventy-five years, Penguin has been the leading publisher of classic literature in the English-speaking world. With more than 2,000 titles, Penguin Classics represents a global bookshelf of the best works throughout history and across genres and disciplines. Readers trust the series to provide authoritative texts enhanced by introductions and notes by distinguished scholars and contemporary authors, as well as up-to-date translations by award-winning translators.

Review Quotes

"I find it difficult to imagine similar depth, whether by or about the Indigenous people, anywhere in Latin American literature. . . . The translation . . . is an achievement unto itself." --Eduardo Galeano, Los Angeles Times

"No list about Guatemalan writers would be complete without mentioning an Asturias book. . . . Men of Maize . . . addresses the way of life of the Indigenous Maya population and its attempt to hold on to its culture . . . and tells the stories of what it means when one culture attempts and succeeds to impose itself upon the other--the loss of identities, spiritualities, and histories." --Jared Lemus, Electric Literature

"Men of Maize is Asturias's Mayan masterpiece, his Indigenous Ulysses, a deep dive into the forces that made and kept the Maya a subservient caste, and the perpetual resistance that kept Guatemala's many Mayan cultures alive and resilient." --Héctor Tobar, from the Foreword

"Men of Maize may one day be considered the most important book written in Central America since the so-called 'Maya Bible' or 'Maya Genesis, ' the Popol Vuh. . . . [It] is the most ambitious novel ever written about the mysterious, fascinating, and tragic country that . . . became known as Guatemala. . . . Its contexts are excitingly diverse and its subtexts extraordinarily profound. . . . It has a tragic relevance for all of us that is even more immediate now than when it was written. . . . [It] is a profound meditation on the history of Guatemala . . . [and] a symbolic history of life on this planet, the whole vast world and universe viewed from the cruel and beautiful case study that was Guatemala. . . . There are few novels from which more can be learned." --Gerald Martin, from the Introduction

About the Author

Miguel Ángel Asturias (1899-1974) was awarded the Nobel Prize in Literature in 1967. A poet, diplomat, and novelist from Guatemala, he studied law in his home country before continuing his studies in Paris, where he encountered the surrealist writings that would deeply influence his work. In addition to being a prolific writer, he worked as a newspaper correspondent in western Europe and later as an ambassador for Guatemala in Europe and Latin America. He wrote numerous works of fiction, poetry, drama, and essays, including the novels Mr. President and Men of Maize.
Gerald Martin (translator/introduction) is the Andrew W. Mellon Professor Emeritus of Modern Languages at the University of Pittsburgh. Among his publications are Gabriel García Márquez: A Life and Journeys Through the Labyrinth: Latin American Fiction in the Twentieth Century. Martin lives in England.
Héctor Tobar (foreword) is a Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist, a novelist, and a professor at the University of California, Irvine. His books include Our Migrant Souls, the New York Times bestseller Deep Down Dark, and The Barbarian Nurseries. The son of Guatemalan immigrants, Tobar is a native of Los Angeles, where he lives with his family.