Miguel Angel Asturias (1899-1974) was a Guatemalan novelist and the Nobel Prize winner for literature in 1967. His profound interest in the Indian culture and a prose style inspired by surrealism give his writings a special character.

Miguel Angel Asturias was born in Guatemala City on Oct. 19, 1899, a year after the rise to power of the Guatemalan dictator Manuel Estrada Cabrera. The figure of the dictator was to exert an important influence on his life. The dictatorship forced--for political reasons--the relocation of his family to the small town of Salamá, where Asturias came into close contact with the descendants of the Maya Indians. It thus made him keenly aware of political and social issues from an early age, and it provided him with a model for the dominant presence in his most celebrated novel, Mr. President (1946).

The Asturias family returned to Guatemala City in 1907, but Estrada Cabrera was...