Nahuatl Stories: Indigenous Tales from Mexico

Nahuatl Stories is the first English translation of one of Mexican literature’s classics. The Nahuas–backbone of the Aztec empire–were the pre-Hispanic indigenous people of central Mexico and the Nahuatl literature presented in this collection conveys the customs, traditions, rituals, and beliefs of a culture with a very complex sociopolitical structure. Their cosmology sees gods, human beings, and nature coexisting and interacting on a daily basis. Today, more than 1.5 million people still speak Nahuatl, the second most widely spoken language in Mexico after Spanish, but it is largely underrepresented in literature. These 14 stories were first collected by Pablo Gonzalez Casanova in 1946, and this unique new edition presents the English translations facing the original Nahuatl texts and includes the author’s introduction as well as an introduction by Miguel Leon-Portilla, an authority on Nahuatl history and literature.