Miguel Ángel Asturias

Who is Miguel Ángel Asturias?

Miguel Ángel Asturias was a Guatemalan novelist, poet, playwright, and diplomat, born in Guatemala City. He studied law before moving to Paris in the 1920s, where he attended lectures on Maya civilization and translated the Popol Vuh, the sacred Kʼicheʼ Maya text, an experience that shaped his lifelong engagement with indigenous Guatemalan culture. His most influential novels include El Señor Presidente (written largely in the 1920s-30s, published 1946), a searing portrait of dictatorship inspired by Guatemala's Estrada Cabrera regime, and Hombres de maíz (1949), which wove Maya cosmology into a modern narrative and is regarded as a forerunner of Latin American magical realism. He also wrote the "Banana Trilogy," criticizing the exploitation of Central America by U.S. fruit companies. Asturias served in diplomatic posts, including ambassador to France, and was awarded the 1967 Nobel Prize in Literature "for his vivid literary achievement, deeply rooted in the national traits and traditions of Indian peoples of Latin America." He died in Madrid in 1974.

Sources: Nobel Prize official site, "Miguel Ángel Asturias – Biographical" (nobelprize.org) · Miguel Ángel Asturias, El Señor Presidente (1946) · Miguel Ángel Asturias, Hombres de maíz (1949)