Leyendas de Guatemala
first book to be published by Nobel-prizewinning author Miguel Ángel Asturias
Leyendas de Guatemala (Legends of Guatemala, 1930) was the first book to be published by Nobel-prizewinning author Miguel Ángel Asturias. The book is a re-telling of Maya origin stories from Asturias's homeland of Guatemala. It reflects the author's study of anthropology and Central American indigenous civilizations, undertaken in France, at the Sorbonne where he was influenced by the European perspective.
The nature of oral tradition is evident in Leyendas de Guatemala, as shown in the dedication: “To my mother, who used to tell me stories.” This reflects the traditional character of the origin of the stories, in which Asturias takes collective memory to a higher level of awareness through his fictionalization.
In critic Jean Franco's description, the book "gave lyrical recreations of Guatemalan folklore many of which drew their inspiration from pre-Columbian and colonial sources".
The writing style of Leyendas de Guatemala is the product of a fortunate experiment, which established a structure that can be called poetic intuition, and a style which can be seen as a precursor to the future literary movement of magical realism. Leyendas de Guatemala can be read not only from an anthropological perspective, but also as an aesthetic experience that confirms the originality of the style.
The book was translated to English by Kelly Washbourne (bilingual edition, ISBN 978-1891270536).
Plot summary
Leyendas de Guatemala is made up of a series of short stories, which transform the oral legends of popular culture into relevant textual manifestations.
Guatemala
Guatemala serves as the first introduction to the legends about the Central American nation bearing the same name.
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Chronology provides the most reliable spine for this subject; interpretation should follow only after identities and dates are secure. The source revision retrieved here is dated Aug 15, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q6538013. VIAF identifies the subject as 193684450. None of the 2 selected statements returned an explicit reference. The first chronological checks are 1930.
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This entry incorporates text from “Leyendas de Guatemala” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.