About the Author

Miguel Angel Asturias was born in 1899 in Guatemala. After studying there he lived in Paris between 1923 and 1933, where he wrote El Senor Presidente (The President). It was unpublished for thirteen years until the fall of Guatemalan dictator Jorge Ubico. From 1944 until 1954, Asturias held various government positions until the fall of President Jacobo Arbenz Guzman, when he went into exile in Argentina. In 1966, Asturias was awarded the Lenin Peace Prize, and in 1967 he won the Nobel Prize for Literature. He died in 1974 in Madrid, Spain.

Reviews

A phenomenal work that will never dateAsturias leaves no doubt about what it is like to be tortured, or what it is like to work for a man who is both omnipotent and depraved - TLS