Legends of Guatemala

Novelist, playwright, poet, translator, and diplomat, Miguel Asturias received the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1967 for what was considered highly colored writing rooted in national individuality and Indian tradition. His first novel, El Senor Presidente, a fictional account of the period of violence and human degradation under the Guatemalan dictator Estrada Cabrera, was completed in 1932 but not published until 1946 for political reasons. It was pioneering in its use of surrealistic structures and Indian myth as integrated parts of the novel's structure. Mulata (1963) uses a Guatemalan version of the legend of Faust as a point of departure for Asturias's inventive use of Indian myth.

In 1966, Asturias received the Lenin Peace Prize for writings that expose American intervention against the Guatemalan people.

Following the 1954 uprising, Asturias was deprived of his citizenship by the new government and lived in exile for eight years. After the election of President Julio Cesar Mendez Montenegro in 1967, he was restored to his country's diplomatic services as ambassador to Paris and continued to publish.

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