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Miguel Ángel Asturias. (credit: Camera Press)

(born Oct. 19, 1899, Guatemala City, Guat. — died June 9, 1974, Madrid, Spain) Guatemalan poet, novelist, and diplomat. He moved to Paris in 1923 and became a Surrealist under the influence of André Breton. His first major works appeared in the 1930s. He began his diplomatic career in 1946; it culminated in his serving as ambassador to France 1966 – 70. Asturias's writings combine a Mayan mysticism with an epic impulse toward social protest, especially against U.S. and oligarchic power. In Men of Maize (1949), often considered his masterpiece, he depicts the seemingly irreversible wretchedness of the Indian peasant. Other major novels, some of which employ the style of magic realism, are El Señor Presidente (1946), a fictional denunciation of Guatemala's dictator; The Cyclone (1950); The Green Pope (1954); and The Eyes of the Interred (1960). He won the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1967.

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