Men of Maize

About Men of Maize

A novel whose time has come: the Nobel Prize–winning author of Mr. President’s visionary epic of ecological devastation, capitalist exploitation, and Indigenous wisdom, now available again for its 75th anniversary with a new introduction and with a foreword by Pulitzer Prize winner Héctor Tobar

A Penguin Classic

Deep in the mountain forests of Guatemala, a community of Indigenous Mayans—the “men of maize”—serves as stewards to sacred corn crops. When profiteering outsiders encroach on their territory and threaten to abuse the fertile land, they enter a bloody struggle to protect their way of life. Blurring the lines between history and mythology, Nobel Prize winner Miguel Ángel Asturias’s lush, dream-like work offers a prescient warning against the loss of ancestral wisdom and the environmental destruction set in motion by colonial oppression and capitalist greed.

For more than seventy-five years, Penguin has been the leading publisher of classic literature in the English-speaking world. With more than 2,000 titles, Penguin Classics represents a global bookshelf of the best works throughout history and across genres and disciplines. Readers trust the series to provide authoritative texts enhanced by introductions and notes by distinguished scholars and contemporary authors, as well as up-to-date translations by award-winning translators.