Mirror of Lida Sal: Tales Based on Mayan Myths and Guatemalan Legends (Discoveries) - Softcover

Asturias, Miguel Ángel

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0935480838 ISBN 13: 9780935480832

Publisher: Latin American Literary Review Press, 1997

Synopsis

A never-before-translated collection of stories based on Mayan myth and Guatemalan folklore by the 1967 Nobel Laureate. Brilliantly inventive adaptations of Guatemalan folk tales intermesh the technical virtuosity, incomparable imagination, and profound poetic vision of a giant of twentieth-century literature.

About this title

About the Author:

Born on October 19, 1899, Miguel Ángel Asturias was raised by an affluent family in Guatemala City. As an undergraduate in the capital, he became deeply involved in radical politics. Realizing his life was in danger, in 1923 he fled into exile after receiving a law degree from the University of San Carlos. He traveled through Europe, finally settling in Paris to study ethnology and Central American mythology at the Sorbonne. It was during this ear that he became a dedicated Surrealist under the tutelage of André Breton, translated the Popol Vuh and the Annals of Xahil, and published the forerunner to this volume, Legends of Guatemala (1930), which contained an introduction by Paul Valéry and received tremendous critical acclaim. In 1942, still actively working as a writer, he was elected to the Guatemalan congress and soon after, embarked on a diplomatic career. When his citizenship was revoked by the dictatorship in 1954, he moved to Argentina where he worked as a correspondent and advisor to a publishing house. In 1967, he was awarded the Nobel Prize for literature, seven years before his death.

Language Notes:

Text: English (translation)
Original Language: Spanish

About this edition

• Publisher: Latin American Literary Review Press
• Publication date: 1997
• ISBN 10: 0935480838
• ISBN 13: 9780935480832
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 146