Miguel Angel Asturias and the Literature of the Indigenismo

Abstract Miguel Angel Asturias is one of the most radical authors of the twentieth century; his experimental use of language and implementation of up‐to‐the‐minute literary techniques can be readily compared to those of James Joyce, Virginia Woolf, and William Faulkner. However, because he wrote in two very different modes – on the one hand, realistic and rather conventional novels and short stories sprinkled with surrealist touches and, on the other, experimental works that challenged the limits of both language and style – few readers tackle his more complex and inventive works. To a certain extent, the extravagance of his own originality deprived Asturias of wider recognition. Among his most original works, Legends of Guatemala (1930), Men of Maize (1949), and Mulata (1963) combine a didactic message with revolutionary narrative structure in a widely influential aesthetic practice.