Rating: 7.0/10.
Novel that is a work of Latin American magical realism by Guatemalan author and Nobel Prize winner in Literature, Miguel Ángel Asturias. It is challenging to pinpoint exactly what is happening or what the book is about. Broadly speaking, it depicts the struggles between the indigenous Maya people and the maize-growers from a town. The story opens with Gaspar Ilom, a legendary Maya character, who is hunted down after a feast. The next section is on Machojón, a character who seeks a wife from a neighboring village but is ambushed by supernatural fireflies emerging from the fire. His father sets off a devastating fire in an attempt to recreate his act. Following this, a group of brothers, acting on the advice of a curer shaman figure, kill members of a neighboring tribe and after the accidental death of the curer, he is believed to have transformed into a deer.
I found the narrative too difficult to follow and stopped after about 60 pages. Overall, there are a lot of supernatural events that are accepted as normal by all the characters in this timeline and are not questioned. There is a persistent vagueness about which events are real, imagined, or metaphorical, giving the book a dreamlike or drug-induced dream feeling.
