Demetrio Aguilera Malta was a man of great talent and energy who traveled widely and accumulated varied experiences. At the end of his long life he had been a businessman, painter, world traveler, diplomat, teacher, artist, poet, playwright, editor, essayist, critic, journalist, and filmmaker, as well as one of Ecuador's greatest writers of fiction. He was a member of the Grupo de Guayaquil, five young writers who achieved fame in the 1930s for their social-realist fiction about Ecuador's coastal campesinos. With the possible exception of Jorge Icaza's Huasipungo (1934; translated 1964), Aguilera Malta's literary works have received more international critical attention over the last sixty years than those of any other Ecuadoran writer. His plays and short stories have been extensively anthologized; four of his novels have been translated into English and other languages, and in the extensive critical literature on his works he has been cited as one of...