Books by country North America
Six books by writers from Guatemala, set there, that give a real sense of the place, starting with I, Rigoberta Menchú: An Indian Woman in Guatemala and Men of Maize.
Guatemala's best-known writer is Miguel Ángel Asturias, who won the Nobel Prize in Literature in 1967. His novel Men of Maize sets maize cosmology against land conflict in Maya highland communities. Maya storytelling is far older than Spanish rule: the Popol Vuh, a K'iche' Maya account of creation, was written down in the sixteenth century. Land, the 1954 coup and the long civil war run through much later writing.
In I, Rigoberta Menchú: An Indian Woman in Guatemala, Rigoberta Menchú gives a K'iche' Maya woman's testimony of village life, plantation labour and wartime violence. Victor Montejo, a Jakaltek Maya schoolteacher, recounts an army raid on a highland village in the early 1980s in Testimony: Death of a Guatemalan Village. Gaspar Pedro González, a Q'anjob'al Maya writer, portrays ritual and the calendar in the novel A Mayan Life.
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Testimony of a K'iche' Maya woman on highland village life, plantation labour and the violence of the civil war.
Mythic, dense novel of Maya highland communities, maize cosmology and land conflict with commercial farming interests.
Guerrilla memoir of the 1970s Ixcán and Petén rainforest, showing the early armed struggle and Maya communities there.
Novel of 1950s–60s Guatemala City, following the aftermath of the 1954 coup and a society sliding toward repression.
A Maya Jakaltek schoolteacher's account of an army raid on a highland village during the early 1980s counterinsurgency.
Novel by a Q'anjob'al Maya writer portraying traditional highland life, ritual, the calendar and community values.
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