Description

A novel whose time has come: the Nobel Prize-winning author’s visionary epic of ecological devastation, capitalist exploitation and indigenous wisdom

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 Angel 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.

Publisher Review

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 * 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 — Hector Tobar 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 … 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