Men of Maize

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.

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 and a novelist, a contributing writer for the New York Times opinion pages, and an associate professor at the University of California, Irvine. His books include Our Migrant Souls, the New York Times bestseller Deep Down Dark, and Translation Nation.The son of Guatemalan immigrants, Tobar is a native of Los Angeles, where he lives with his family.