Nobel Prize-winning Guatemalan author Miguel Angel Asturias’s masterpiece-the original Latin American dictator novel and pioneering work of magical realism-in its first new English translation in more than half a century, featuring a foreword by Nobel laureate Mario Vargas Llosa

A Penguin Classic

In an unnamed country, an egomaniacal dictator schemes to dispose of a political adversary and maintain his grip on power. As tyranny takes hold, everyone is forced to choose between compromise and death. Inspired by life under the regime of President Manuel Estrada Cabrera of Guatemala, where it was banned for many years, and infused with exuberant lyricism, Mayan symbolism, and Guatemalan vernacular, Nobel Prize winner Miguel Angel Asturias’s magnum opus is at once a surrealist masterpiece, a blade-sharp satire of totalitarianism, and a gripping portrait of psychological terror.