Suchergebnisse

In literary terms, the new novel did not emerge until 1976 in Guatemala, which represented a ten-to-fifteen-year lag behind most of the other Latin American countries. Since 1976, however, four Guatemalan novels have been published that merit consideration in the same rank with Hijo de hombre (1960), La muerte de Artemio Cruz (1962), Gestos (1963), Rayuela (1963), La casa verde (1966), Cien años de soledad (1967), and Tres tristes tigres (1967). The explanation for the earlier paucity of high-quality, structurally and linguistically experimental novels is simple. The blatant violation of human rights by the autocratic governments of Carlos Castillo Armas (1954-57) and his successors has led to the exodus of the best-known authors and the self-censorship or silence of others. In this political climate, the birth of a Guatemalan literary generation of 1954 was almost completely aborted. With the exception of some new works published abroad by Miguel Ángel Asturias (1899-1974) and Mario Monteforte Toledo (b. 1911), Guatemala's two most important twentieth-century novelists, the novels published between 1954 and 1975 were generally undistinguished, as is suggested by the annotated bibliography accompanying this essay.