Μια κάποια μιγάδα

by Miguel Ángel Asturias, Μπάμπης Λυκούδης (Translator)

Ο φτωχός χωριάτης Σελεστίνο Γιουμί, για ν' αποκτήσει τα πλούτη και τη δύναμη που ονειρεύεται, πουλάει τη γυναίκα του στον Ταζόλ, το δαίμονα των φύλλων του καλαμποκιού. Όταν πια γίνει ο ισχυρότερος άνδρας του τόπου, ο Γιουμί συναντά στο δρόμο του μια σαγηνευτική μιγάδα και την παντρεύεται χωρίς δεύτερη σκέψη. Αλλά η μιγάδα δεν είναι παρά μια παγίδα του Διαβολου: ένα πλάσμα βίαιο, ανεξήγητο, ατιθάσευτο και χωρίς φύλο, όπως η Σελήνη που ενσαρκώνει.

Μετανιωμένος ο Γιουμί, επιχειρεί να πάρει πίσω την πρώτη του γυναίκα, τη γλυκιά Νινιλόχ, και με τη βοήθειά της αν γλιτώσει από τη μιγάδα. Ο Γιουμί και Νινιλόχ, όμως, ανήκουν πια στο βασίλειο της μαγείας. Έχουν παγιδευτεί οριστικά στο παιχνίδι των υπερφυσικών στοιχείων...

Ο μάγος Αστούριας, ο μεγάλος Νοτιοαμερικανός λογοτέχνης, τιμημένος με το βραβείο Νόμπελ, ενορχηστρώνει σ' αυτό το θαυμαστό βιβλίο ένα βακχικό πανηγύρι, μια ανιμιστική γιορτή, έναν ατέρμονο χορό πνευμάτων, δαιμόνων και συμβόλων, γεμάτο από την ποίηση των ονείρων και την παράξενη ομορφιά των μύθων της πατρίδας του.

Genres: Fiction, Latin American, Literature, Mythology, Nobel Prize, Fantasy, Literary Fiction

477 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 1963

About the author

Guatemalan poet, novelist, diplomat, and winner of the Nobel Prize for literature in 1967. Asturias's writings combine the mysticism of the Maya with epic impulse toward social protest. His most famous novel is EL SEÑOR PRESIDENTE (1946), about life under the rule of a ruthless dictator. Asturias spent much of his life in exile because of his public opposition to dictatorial rule.

Reviews

[Vit Babenco · Rating 5 out of 5]

Mulata is an extravagant modernistic myth imbued and permeated with powerful magic through and through.
A certain fly wizard – it isn’t a fly that flies and buzzes but a fly that is a codpiece – strikes a bargain with Tazol, the corn-husk devil to exchange his beloved wife for the riches…

The embodied Tazol, a wind with a young face, his mouth afflicted with moles along the wrinkles of his smile, was handing him a large cardboard box, the kind that toys come in. Yumí, if he had had the strength to lift it, would have thrown it in Tazol’s face. A box of toys instead of the riches he had been promised, after he had given him his wife, was the cruelest of jokes.

Thus the hero’s misadventures begin… The tale is full of transformations, perturbations, and deviltry… At last, after many a mishap, the hero finds himself in the town ruled by ancient elemental demons wielding all sorts of evil… But one fine day the Christian devil arrives with his own kind of evil…

The priest gasped at that diabolical and satanic spectacle, an Ecce Homo with the face of a screech owl, and, prae manibus, an Infant Jesus who looked like a fish, but at that very moment he had his revelation, he reflected that it was not part of the workings of the earth demons, destructive powers, shattering, brutal, but was the low comedy, without grandeur, of the captain of the rain of accursed angels that fell from heaven.

Earth demons depart… However, both pagan and Christian devils are equally greedy, envious, lewd and vicious so using man’s avarice, envy, lust and other vices they reign over man…

In the front, toward the center, facing the main altar, on a prie-dieu, that Requiem Mass was being heard by the certain Mulata, dressed as a dead bride, and Celestino Yumí, that rich fellow with whom she had only been married in a civil ceremony during the Fair of San Martín Chile Verde and who now, corporally present as a porcupine, was taking her as his wife, and with the shout of “Breedingtimetoday!” that echoed through the empty streets he buried all his needles of delight in her dark flesh, right there in the church, during the wedding Mass that was a funeral, pricks to which the Mulata, beautiful, like the back of the moon, responded with a roaming of her white eyes over the faces of the wizards chewing garlic, rue, tobacco, chile, mullein, clinging to the marital beast who did not soften his spines, but made them harder and sharper in the buggle-snuggle of the amorous game, in which she felt that the luminous spines were coming out of Yumí’s golden bones – a sun that was so internal, a light that was so deep…

When new beliefs are winning, they mercilessly destroy all the supporters of the old beliefs that stand on their way.

[Glenn Russell · Rating 5 out of 5]

Mulata by Miguel Ángel Asturias. Novel reading as hypnotic, language-induced hallucination, a powerful drug propelling us to fly, walk, crawl and squirm over and through lush, green Guatemalan Hieronymus Bosch-like landscapes, a world where stalks of corn talk and people can, at the drop of a banana, transform into macaw-dwarfs, spider-parrots and everything else imaginable.

Since there are a number of splendid reviews already posted here, as a way of having some fun and as a tribute to my love of one of the most magical of magical realist Latin American authors, here is my tale of his mythical half-brother, Carlos Asturias:

CARLOS ASTURIAS
This one’s about a soccer match where the team in white is angles and the team in red, devils: the winter controls life after death. Those were the words of Carlos Asturias, author, a man who spoke about his stories in a rich basso profundo, and afterwards, because I agreed to be his translator, handed me dozens of his stories stuffed in a cardboard box when I departed.

Since then I’ve spent the last twenty-four sleepless hours voraciously reading his work. Whether about plotting revolution in a tin shanty on the outskirts of Jalapa or how a peasant is reduced to digging form worms to feed his starving family, his storytelling is wildly inventive and explosive, written in a rich, eloquent prose.

It isn’t true that Carlos Asturias’s father was a bear, but having seen that massive beard and barreled torso covered over with curly-brown hair, you would think his mother, human maybe, but his father, definitely a bear, a lost grizzly driven out of the Northwest by forest fires, stumbling through Mexico and then driven again across the plains of Guatemala, where half-blind, burned and filled with rage, mounted a mestizo who eventually gave birth to a bear-boy, who grew up to be Carlos Asturias.

I stood up and peered into a mirror reflecting a second mirror on the opposite wall, creating a tunnel of closet-sized living rooms bending in infinite regress, a gaunt, sallow-skinned face in each room. That face belonged to me, I suppose, and was attached to a lanky body pushed to exhaustion by reading and brooding over the stories of Carlos Asturias.

He wrote all types of stories. A horror story were an obese washerwoman returns to her village for her mother’s funeral. She waddles up a twisted dirt road and reflects on her childhood: the tortillas, the guaycan trees, the sad-faced monkey she kept as a pet, but most of all her mother, the anchor of the family, as solid as the mountain she could see from her bedroom window. The washerwoman finds her village in ruin, her family’s house empty and the devil sleeping in her mother’s bed.

Mentioning the devil reminded me of the story Carlos Asturias was working on currently, the soccer match where angels are playing devils, where the outcome determines the fate of the human race. I wanted to know how the game ends.

And where did Carlos Asturias learn to speak such fluent English? Not even a trace of an accent. He hasn’t been in this country, Gringoland as he calls it, for more than a year. Truly a man of many talents. Looking at his large round eyes that seem to have the shine of bronze, my guess is he will have the devils win with three goals, one for the father, one for the son and one for the holy ghost.

Speaking of Gringoland, he wrote a satire where Guatemala breaks off after an earthquake and floats up next to Florida. United States politicians toy with the idea of making their new land the fifty-first state, or then again, walling it off, creating one giant tourist attraction. When a reporter asks about the Spanish-speaking people living there, all the politicians laugh derisively.

There’s also a wonderful story involving a walleyed prisoner who digs a hole in his cell with his bare hands. Down, down he goes. He discovers a paradise at the bottom of his hole, a land replete with bananas, mangoes, papayas, oranges and populated by long-legged maidens of every race. And the prisoner is the only man. One problem, though. Oxygen is in short supply. So the prisoner alternates between paradise at night and jail during the day.

I wondered why Carlos Asturias needed a translator at all. What was my link with this fantastic man? In the hope of gaining insight, I continued to relate the stories to what could very well be his past.

Like the one where a panther preys on a village, killing scores of women and children, until one fearless boy ventures off with his machete to kill the animal. However, when the boy encounters it in the jungle, he teaches the panther to dance. He then returns to the village with the dancing panther only to decapitate the creature on the steps of the church.

But there’s at least one story that can’t be strictly autobiographical. It’s where a man contracts a disease that eats away so much of his flesh, he orders his wife to amputate his arms and legs, which she does. Afterwards, since he isa pain-racked stump, he orders her to bury him alive. The wife, a sea of tears, digs a grave, but in an act of compassion, slits her husband’s throat before she buries him. The husband could have been Carlos Asturias’s father, brother or friend, but not the author himself, unless, of course, he’s learned to transcend the laws of nature.

Or the laws of nature were transcended for him. Like in the piece where a new figure of a man or woman appears mysteriously on a mural every morning. Correspondingly, the real man or woman whose figure is depicted is nowhere to be found. Diego, the story’s main character, stands guard at the mural one night. As a new figure crystallize on the mural, he covers it over with white paint. When Diego returns home, he discovers the military had been searching for his brother, Sergio. Fortunately, Sergio narrowly escaped, hiding himself in a barrel of flour.

Again, what was Carlos Asturias’s life apart from his literary endeavor? Undoubtedly, I had some good clues. Like his connection with music. There was an entire series about musical instruments. For instance, an Indian flute, a zul, that is good for rainmaking; a set of bells used as an aphrodisiac, a guitar that becomes a symbol for yearning, romance, loss, grief, and finally death. Speaking of clues that could be personally revealing, how about all the war stories – among families, neighbors, an entire nation drenched in blood.

Putting aside music and bloodshed, undoubtedly my favorite story was the one where an architect wanders into what he thinks is a garden but is actually a labyrinth. The hapless architect meanders for hours among the hedges, nearly abandoning all hope until he discovers a trapdoor leading down into a tunnel. He descends only to find that the tunnel is the beginning of yet another labyrinth, this time one made of slabs of rock. Hour after weary hour the architect fumbles aimlessly in the made of darkness, until he comes upon another trapdoor. He goes through, the stone door slamming shut behind him. When his eyes adjust to all the bright lights, he sees a name on the door. The architect is transfixed, the name turns out to be his own, he has arrived at his very own office. Or has he really? Is this office, this building, this city the one he’s know all his life or is what he’s experiencing simply another turn in the cavernous labyrinth?

More than any of the others, I pondered this story as I leaned my elbow against the wall and kept staring at all the gaunt faces in the mirror blankly staring back at me.

Later, I left my apartment and was walking along the street to catch a subway to meet Carlos Asturias. A beggar approached me for a handout. Not an unusual event; this city is crawling with people with their hands open for spare change. I stopped and looked at him for a moment but resumed walking. There was something about thi beggar, though that I couldn’t shake: the red bandana knotted around his forehead, the way he leered with four rotten yellow teeth, two bottom teeth pointing outward and two crooked top teeth between them. This beggar was familiar to me, but I couldn’t quite figure out why.

I tried thinking about Carlos Asturias, however this time the author was all jumbled up with the beggar. Carlos Asturias wore a red bandana and leered with the beggar’s four yellow teeth. The beggar, in turn, had a full-grown beard of curly brown hair, staring at me with round eyes the color of bronze and asked for change with Carlos Asturias’s basso profundo.

And a few minutes later, when I entered the subway station I saw a quartet of earnest-looking men huddled around a tall, skinny guy speaking in whispers. I speaker glared at me as if I were his enemy. Startled, I turned my head away and paced to the other end of the platform, hiding myself in the crowd.

Fortunately, the headlight was in sight; the train pulled into the station. Relieved, I crammed in the front car among the throng and reached for a strap overhead. Added to my feelings about the beggar, that band of suspicious characters at the station made my skin crawl. Those men reminded me of another group, but for the life of me I couldn’t make the connection.

Once again, I tried thinking of Carlos Asturias. This time, not only was he interchangeable with the beggar, my imagination put him in the middle of that gang at the station, speaking in whispers just like their tall, skinny leader.

I tried not to think at all. Instead, I scanned the faces of everyone stuffed in the car with me: secretaries and bookkeepers and managers all going to work, students on their way to school, down-and-outers going who knows where. My eyes rested on a well-groomed gentleman reading a magazine. He has round horn-rimmed glasses and sported a Pancho Villa mustache. Where have I seen him before? I kept looking. Then it hit me! With the force of a billy club cracking my skull. As if the weight of the entire crowd was suddenly standing on top of my head.

What triggered my memory was the gentleman raising his magazine so I could see the cover: Architect’ Digest. He fit the description of the architect in Carlos Asturias’s story. More than fit, he exactly fit! But that was only the beginning. I now recalled how the beggar on the street resembled the peasant who dug for worms to feed his starving family. And the men at the station – they were the ones plotting revolution in a tin shanty on the outskirts of Jalapa.

I broke into a sweat. After all, whose apartment was I riding toward but that of the author himself. Interesting man, my ass. A sorcerer more likely. And to think it was my intent to simply exchange pleasantries, to let him know how much I enjoyed his work and looked forward to translating his stories. Now, I focused on just one question: who was going to win his diabolical soccer match, the angels or devils? Let him be the one to start a conversation about my seeing his characters in the flesh. But so doing, I reasoned, I’d have a clearer idea of what kind of magician I was really dealing with here.

I looked again at the architect. Unfortunately, there wasn’t a chance of speaking with him. Wouldn’t that have made for an interesting conversation?! He stood near the door on the other side of the subway car and the way we were packed in, I would have been lucky to move six inches in his direction. Besides, he got off at the next stop.

I started looking for the other characters of Carlos Asturias’s stories: the walleyed prisoner who found paradise in a hole, the obese washerwoman returning to her village, flour-covered Sergio, the young boy with his machete, the husband who was a pain-racked stump. I looked for them all -- in the subway car, on station platforms, then after I got off, along the sidewalks, driving in cars. I kept looking and looking but it was as if someone flipped a switch – his characters where there this morning, but as soon as I started actively seeking them out, there were nowhere to be found.
When I finally arrived at Carlos Asturias’s apartment, he was sitting in the dark watching television without the sound, the sickly bluish glow bathing his face and beard.

I maintained my resolve. I asked: How is your story going? Who do you have winning the soccer match?

His response caught me off guard. Not taking his eyes from the set he said: You can find out for yourself, senor.

I asked: What do you mean?

Carlos Asturias pointed to the screen. Let’s follow the game together, he said.

I could only see the back of the set from where I stood, so I walked around next to Carlos Asturias. A soccer team was taking the field, a team in red uniforms. Enough was enough. I told Carlos Asturias in an even tone that I could read, translate and watch many things but I would not be a spectator to his fiendish game. He only grunted in response. I left him there in his room, his eyes still glued to the tube.

Too agitated to wait for an elevator, I took the stairway. His face, his voice, the stories, the characters in the flesh, the soccer match, it all clicked in my head with the rapid click-click-click of castanets. But before I knew it, other men were trotting down the stairway with me. Suddenly I was wearing gloves, different shoes and different clothes – the uniform of a goalkeeper. And the others around me – they were also wearing uniforms, soccer uniforms, white ones with gold numbers on the back. Another turn in the stairway and we were all in a tunnel. I heard an ear-splitting roar – the tunnel lead into a stadium and the roar came from the largest crowd I’ve ever seen. My heart pumped pure adrenaline as we took the field against the team in red. This was going to be some soccer match. After all, so much was riding on the final score.


Guatemalan poet and novelist Miguel Ángel Asturias, 1899-1974

[°°°·.°·..·°¯°·._.· ʜᴇʟᴇɴ Ροζουλί Εωσφόρος ·._.·°¯°·.·° .·°°° ★·.·´¯`·.·★ Ⓥⓔⓡⓝⓤⓢ Ⓟⓞⓡⓣⓘⓣⓞⓡ Ⓐⓡⓒⓐⓝⓤⓢ Ταμετούρο Αμ · Rating 4 out of 5]

"Ονειρικοί θρύλοι της Γουατεμάλας".


Οι μύθοι των Ινδιάνων και η απογείωση της παραληρηματικής φαντασίας.
Πολύ δύσκολο να χαρακτηριστεί αυτό το βιβλίο και να ενταχθεί σε κάποια κατηγορία. Είναι ίσως απο μόνο του μια κατηγορία λογοτεχνική, καρπός μυθολογίας, φυσικών ονείρων,ποιητικής ιστορίας, θρησκειών και χείμαρρος ανεξάντλητου ερωτισμού, δαιμονοληψίας, αστρολογίας και αιωνίων φρικιαστικών θρύλων.

Η ιστορία μας ξεκινάει με μια γκροτέσκο περιγραφή για τη ζωή και την περιπέτεια ενός φτωχού αγρότη βασισμένη στον πανάρχαιο μύθο της συναλλαγής με το Διάβολο.
Ο Φάουστ του Αστούριας, ο χωριάτης Γιουμί κλείνει μια πιο απλή συμφωνία με το Δαίμονα των φύλλων του καλαμποκιού, τον Ταζόλ.
Για να αποκτήσει αμύθητα πλούτη και περιουσία ανεξάντλητη δίνει στον Ταζόλ τη γυναίκα του Καταλίνα Ζαμπάλα και, χωρίς να το ξέρει, την ίδια του την ψυχή. Απο εκεί ξεκινούν όλα και μάλλον δεν τελειώνουν ποτέ.
Αρχίζουμε με ρεαλιστική εκδήλωση γεγονότων στο χωριό, έπειτα μετακινούμαστε σε μαγικό ρεαλιστικό έδαφος και απο κει σε παρανοϊκή φαντασία. Η ιστορία κορυφώνεται με μια υπερρεαλιστική στροβιλώδη περιγραφή παραδόσεων, μύθων, θρύλων και καταστροφή πεποιθήσεων των ιθαγενών της Γουατεμάλας.
Αν αναρωτηθούμε τι ακριβώς ήθελε ο συγγραφέας να πει με αυτό το μοναδικά παράξενο βιβλίο, ίσως βρούμε την απάντηση μεσα σε μια εκρηκτική ατμόσφαιρα συμβολισμών και δαιμόνων. Μέσα απο την γοητευτικά δαιμονική του Μιγάδα που "σκούπιζε το θόρυβο των θρήνων της με μια σκούπα απο μαλλιά νεκρών ...σκούπιζε την πραγματικότητα... και, αφού σκούπισε το φως, σκούπισε το θόρυβο, άρχισε να σκουπίζει το όνειρο, τη σκιά, τη σιγή, ώσπου γύρω και μέσα στο σπίτι των μεγάλων μάγων έγινε το απόλυτο κενό..." Η Μιγάδα έιναι ο απόλυτος συμβολισμός, ίσως γι'αυτό παραμένει χωρίς όνομα ως το τέλος του βιβλίου.

Μέσα στη σχέση και την ιστορία του Γιουμί και της Καταλίνα (χαϊδευτικά Νινιλόχ) εφορμά με ηφαιστειακή δύναμη η βίαιη, απρόβλεπτη, αφύσικα ερωτική και απόλυτα ηδονική Μιγάδα. Η δαιμονική μουλάτα είναι το κεντρικό πρόσωπο του βιβλίου. Γεννημένη απο ενα κράμα αίματος νέγρικου, ινδιάνικου και ισπανικού είναι ένα αφύσικο πλάσμα που επικοινωνεί με όλες τις θρησκείες.

Αυτή η παράξενη σεξουαλική οντότητα που συνδέεται άρρηκτα με τη Σελήνη, γοητεύει το Γιουμί τον κυριεύει και αρχίζει ένας αγώνας ανάμεσα στον άνδρα Γιουμί και τις δυο αλληγορικές γυναικίες φύσεις.
Η μιγάδα-Σελήνη με τον αφύσικο έρωτα που τρελαίνει τον άνδρα αλλά αποκλείει τη γονιμότητα και η Καταλίνα, αρχετυπική γυναίκα, μάνα κάθε μαγείας που τεκνοποιεί με τον διάβολο.
Και οι δυο αντλούν δύναμη απο τη σεξουαλικότητα τους και εξουδετερώνουν τους πάντες, ώσπου η αιδιοκλέφτρα νάνα αλλάζει τα σχέδια τους, αποκλείοντας τους την ηδονή, τη δύναμη και την τεκνοποίηση.

Και οι τρεις έρχονται σε συνεχή μάχη ανάμεσα στους παλαιούς θεούς των δαιμόνων των Μάγιας και στον χριστιανικό διάβολο. Μάχες μεταξύ κάποιων καθολικών ιερέων για τις καρδιές και τις ψυχές του λαού της Τιεραπαουλίτα και των ντόπιων δαιμόνων. Εφιάλτες γεννημένοι απο την παλιά και τη νέα θρησκεία (αλληγορική αφήγηση εκχριστιανισμού των ιθαγενών) δίνουν μείγματα χριστιανικού δόγματος,παγανιστικών δοξασιών και μετεμψυχώσεων σε βαθμό κυριαρχίας στο ιδιόμορφο κλίμα του βιβλίου.
Πρόκειται για μια πολύχρωμη αφήγηση γεμάτη απο λυρική περιγραφική γλώσσα και μεταφορά. Φαντασία και λατινοαμερικανική λαογραφία.
Ο συγγραφέας κατορθώνει περίφημα να μας παρουσιάσει ήθη έθιμα δαίμονες και μυστικές δυνάμεις που έχουν αρχίσει να εξαφανίζονται με την εξέλιξη της προόδου.
Υμνεί τη σεξουαλικότητα αφηγούμενος ενα έπος σαρκικής επιθυμίας. Όμως δεν μας διευκρινίζει αν η μιγάδα του είναι παγανιστική γιορτή, βακχικό μυστήριο ή εξορκισμός.
Κατακεραυνώνει τη χριστιανική θρησκεία, αλλά ειρωνεύεται και κάθε πίστη αφού τις λιώνει τη μια μέσα στην άλλη με την ηφαιστειακή φωτιά της γραφής του.
Τέλος προσπαθεί με μεγάλη επιτυχία να μας μεταφέρει μέσω του δαίμονα Καστόκ πως απο ολα τα πλάσματα της φύσης μόνο ο άνθρωπος αξιώνει μοναξιά και συμφέρον και αποξενώνεται απο τα εκατομμύρια πεπρωμένα που εμπλέκονται γύρω απο το δικό του.

Ίσως όμως να μην υπάρχει καμία εξήγηση γι'αυτό το βιβλίο. Ισως να είναι ενα παιχνίδι του μυαλού, μια φάρσα προς όσους θέλουν να αναλύουν πάντα τα σύμβολα και τις αλληγορίες.
Το μόνο σίγουρο είναι πως καταφέρνει να διασώσει το όνειρο.


**** χάνει το 5ο αστεράκι αξιολόγησης επειδή σε μια διαχρονική Γουατεμάλα γεμάτη μαγικό ρεαλισμό δεν κατάφερε να με κρατήσει συναισθήματα ισορροπημένη με κανεναν ήρωα. Πάνω που συμπαθούσα κάποιον και συμπονούσα τα λάθη και τα πάθη του, έφτανε μερικές σελίδες παρακάτω να τον μισήσω, και τούμπαλιν.
Προς το τέλος άρχισε να με παρασέρνει το βάθος του συναισθήματος όμως ήταν καθαρά αρνητικό. Ήταν αίσθημα φόβου και επιθυμίας για μια ατελέσφορη μάχη.


Καλή ανάγνωση.

Πολλούς ασπασμούς.

[Jonathan · Rating 5 out of 5]

Like something flickering too fast past our field of view. Movement, motion, activity. Disordered but for the forward momentum. Things happen. Then more things happen. Then more. What happens being all that matters. Coherence and logic and Character an irrelevance.

A great flood of myth bursting over the colonial dam.

Surreal only to the extent that the surrealists were simply re-discovering the “primitive”.

Rabelaisian only to the extent that Rabelais was simply re-discovering the “primitive”.

Sex and religion and power and power and religion and sex. Cultural collisions. Absorption and transformation.

Bestiality and brutality. Pain.

Comedy and cultural violence. Rage.

Fluid, flexible, metamorphic.

Dwarfs, devils, dogs and daemons. Genitalia and Giants and giant genitalia.

Mayan and Christian and something even older.

Condensed beyond sense into non-sense. Calculatingly confused. A pivot halfway through into a full-scale post-colonial cartoon.

Filthy as fuck.

Out of Print, of course.

[Neal Adolph · Rating 4 out of 5]

My advice is this: Set everything you know about literature aside. This tosses out the notion of narration, of plotline, of symbolism, or metaphor. Mulata is just exactly what it is.

And so, it should be said, I've never read anything like this before. A surreal fever dream, a lagoon, a black lake where all of the bodies of the impossible are transforming into all of the other bodies of the impossible. A mess, beautiful and robust. Imagery that defies the brain and demands more of the reader than any book I have ever read. A suspension of disbelief beyond any previously accepted suspension. Never has a book forced me to pay so much attention to things I couldn't wrap my attention around.

This is a radical and bewildering mix of mythologies, ideologies, concepts, images, cultures, views of the world. Transformations abound and abound and abound. A grand, sweltering build up to an apocalypse, the collapse of an unrecognizable reality. Surreal? Is that the word here?

But don't be convinced that it is as complex as the language or the events suggest - the story here is simple and it is clear. And it is, in its attempt to bridge and supersede and honour the two worlds that it brings together, highly moral, serious work.

I'm saving this book. It has earned it's place on my shelf.

[surfmadpig · Rating 5 out of 5]

An obscure gem of a book. A constant renegotiation of the world. A surreal war between the old and the new, where no battle is final and no truce lasts.

Η πτώση του βαθέως μέσα στο βαθύ ξεκούφαινε.

Also, I named my cat after this book.

[Thomas · Rating 5 out of 5]

this book is so wild and unhinged that it is kind of difficult to convey in a review. basically it follows, in a kind of picaresque way, the adventures of the main guy and his wife and the things that happen to them like for example making a deal with the corn leaf devil, becoming sorcerers, becoming friends with wild pigs that are really people who were turned into wild pigs, travelling to the realm of cashtoc the great earth demon to become powerful sorcerers, being turned into a dwarf, being turned into a giant, marrying a dwarf, becoming host to the christian devil on his battle to oust the older pagan devils, and you pretty much get the idea. it is also full of sex and strange imagery and follows a bizarre logic of its own that reminds me of some folk tales and amos tutuola. also some great chapter titles: "The Fly Wizard sells his wife to the Corn-Leaf Devil", "A woman's jealousy turns a dwarf into a giant", "The battle of the heads", "A woman cut into pieces keeps on moving, like a snake"

[Michael · Rating 4 out of 5]

This novel is like reading a Hieronymous Bosch painting; words instead of oils. Asturias transports you into a world that oscillates between the real and the mythic.

[Fergus Nm · Rating 5 out of 5]

An incredible and arcane novel that's like some bizarre hybrid of The Palm-Wine Drinkard, Mark Beyer's Amy and Jordan comics, the visions of Hieronymus Bosch, and the deepest depths of The Popol Vuh. Absolutely unpredictable - where else can you witness a parliament of Mayan demons thwart the plans of a Catholic priest by turning his Holy Water-filled coconuts into sexy pagan plant babes? What other novel features a battle between shapeshifting sorcerers where one becomes a gigantic porcupine and the other an 11,000 armed spider? Breviary stuff, as Rabelais would say.

[Howard · Rating 4 out of 5]

This is the second book I've read by this Nobel winning author Asturias (The President being the first). It was written in 1963 and relates in essence the mixing of indigenous native religion in Guatemala (Mayan) with the colonial orthodox Christianity. It has no years quoted and few references as to the actual placement in history of the tale; though there are telegraphs and x-rays so perhaps as early as 1910s but I assumed it was 1960s.

The dating of the tale is academic as it soon becomes apparent to the reader that this is surreal stuff - a mixture of Marquez, Breton and Bulgakov all on speed. It also becomes apparent that this is no easy read. The underlying story I think is that Celestino Yumi (Mr Fly - because he first attracts attention because he does in deed walk around with an open trouser fly), he's a woodcutter and is having an affair with the Mulatta; and his wife Catarina doesn't like this. They have fights and tragedy and displacement(earthquake/volcano) and to make amends the husband and wife travel ultimately arriving in Terrapaulita which has an aged Priest and his sexton. Hoping to advance they train as local witch-doctors?. There are many illusions to local pagan devils, the threesome's errant behaviour and the Christian pressures to conform. There is also an old lady Huasanga, a group of savages and later a replacement Priest.

This is really to understate the complexity of the story as an indication: Yumi is actually tricked by Tazol (the corn devil) into gaining riches by selling his wife (now called Ninilojita) - he misses her so gets her back but now as a dwarf (now called Girona but with a living tattoo of Tazol on her back); they get trapped on a mountain along with some savages (looking like wild boars, the pair each now given a new names) by a person turned to stone by another devil (who walks up the slopes and rolls down as a stone) ultimately escaping; but the wife having gained some sorcery becomes pregnant by Tazol through her navel and has a son Tazolita; and then turns Yumi into a dwarf instead. Huasanga steals Catarina's womb. But later the mulatta turns Yumi into a giant but all three get embroiled in the smuggling of holy water (in coconuts) into the bedevilled Terrapaulita. A fight ensues between them, the local main devil Chastoc and the Christian devil but everyone leaves the town ... Ultimately the mulatta as a 10 thousand legged spider fights Yumi (as a hedgehog) to rest power from the new Priest who needed to sleep with a virgin to lose his small-pox scars.

Here are some quotes:

"Dust and silence. Moon, dust, and silence. Moon, dust, heat, and silence. The breath of oven fire, the red satiety of fires which stained the horizon garnet. The heat was increasing. The leaves began to be singed. The immobility of the trees was tragic, their impossibility of escape and fleeing from the flames. The Mulatta was coming back."

"Why didn't you let that devilish vision be undone? Now, now it already has the flesh of words."

"By Weeping weepingweeping Water Hair, rain which weeps for men who die, which weeps, rather, for the one, the only one, the eternal male who is repeated in all the corpses that she accompanies to the graveyard, proud of the pricks of her tears as they wet her body and converge towards the mortuary fuzz of her pubis of an orphan, a widow, an abandoned woman;"

"Sweeping up reality is daring, but sweeping up what remains in dreams is madness"

"If all the dead began to walk...the earth would be full of steps"

This is a really intriguing book and style which is not unlike Spanish author Cela. The story is there but it is extremely diluted by the sheer imagery, detail and illusions; and so is quite a challenging read and follow (particularly as most characters have at least 4 or 5 names and can get them even before you are later told who they are). If you like magical realism and/or expect a standard Latin American novel then be careful as this is really magical surrealism in extreme.

[MikePeterS · Rating 2 out of 5]

I’m certainly not someone to sit here and judge the translated work of a nobel prize winning author, but this was a challenging read! I found it wildly easy to fall into a stupor of confusion and frustration as I tried deciphering the paragraph-sentences of this mythical fiction. And yet, this sort of mythically rich magical realism calls for disorientation. The bending of body, space, time, and morals. A bit silly, but I was gladdened when a character recapped what had been happening for the past few pages; a resounding relief amongst the density of Asturias’s psychedelically-charged religious metaphors. Not my favorite book, but I’m glad I read!

[Verónica Villegas · Rating 5 out of 5]

Esta obra es representa "realismo mágico" en toda su expresión, a pesar de que "hombres de maíz" es considerada como la novela mejor lograda de Asturias en cuanto a un uso del lenguaje girando entorno de lo maravilloso latiinoamericano sin excluir alguno de nuestros cinco sentidos, con Asturias ves, hueles, sientes y saboreas las metáforas. "Mulata de tal" nos ofrece esto desde una perspectiva barroca, e incluso grotesca, sin dejar esa diacronía melancólicamente familiar del tiempo mítico, narraciones recreadas a través del tiempo y el contexto del narrador y su espectador. No dejaré de recomendar esta maravillosa novela, ya tenía rato que no leía algo que me dejase una sensación tan marcada entre la ficción y la realidad, mejor dicho, mi realidad y aquella recreación de la misma que hacemos al recordar, significar y evocar. Miguel Ángel Asturias es uno de los autores latinoamericanos más enigmáticos, fascinantes e incomprendidos, así como malinterpretado por parámetros no correspondientes a la apreciación de una obra de arte. Él es uno de nuestros autores que debiesen de ser inculcados a nuevas generaciones para que aprendan a disfrutar lo que es maravilloso en la ficción sin tener que recurrir a huecas figuras fantásticas hollywoodenses que ni siquiera inculcan el reconocimiento de una identidad cultural tan importante para enriquecernos en nuestra formación como sujetos críticos

[Keli · Rating 4 out of 5]

This book was mad; utterly, insanely, barking at the moon mad. I'm not sure what I have just read but it was a non-stop ride. It made me look up Guatemala and I learned that its history is rather tumultuous and mad. A civil war that lasted 30 years. Thirty years of fighting a dictatorship that was backed by the US. Atrocities occurred that should have made the world outraged were ignored for 3 decades. It only ended in 1996! So this book could be about so much more than I know.
I will be reading a non-fiction about Guatemala now.
Fascinating funny and strange. I recommend this to anyone who can deal with absurdity.
I will leave my favourite sentence below:
"Because of that foot business she was, without any doubt, the one who had made him unhappy with her public belly, a stranger's child, the child of a devil, putting horns on him, and reducing him to the state of a dwarf, minimal and horrifying, just like a fœtus with a moustache"

[Greg]

asturias is a prolific surreal writer this book is a battle between the mayan gods and the catholic church for the souls of the people..maybe one of the geatest books ever written

[Andrew · Rating 3 out of 5]

Starts off great then gets very weird and incomprehensible (though poetic).

[Darren · Rating 4 out of 5]

Most genuinely "amazing" book I've ever read - with the fecundity of ideas and the lushness of Asturias's writing (helped presumably by the translator having done a fantastic job!) combining to form a "wall of story" that continuously assaults the reader. Impossible to describe, but the chapters of the "devil's nine turns" and the "dance of the giants" deserve special mention. Started off thinking this was going to be a 6 (or even 7!) star jobby, but (sadly) lost its way/momentum, although still an excellent/enjoyable/mind-expanding 4.5 stars rounding down.

[Luis · Rating 5 out of 5]

Probably the best book I`ve ever read, honestly I have never seen the english version of it, as a native spanish speaker I was lucky enough to read it in spanish, and poor of the guy who takes the task to translate it, is just too complex; well but going back to the book, it is simply a mindtrip it will lead you too the depest part of your subconcious and Asturias gives you a totally sensual experience, every sense is touched and every bit of you trough a language capable of puting you into some sort of mistical trance, this is linguistic experimentation at its best.

[Daniel · Rating 5 out of 5]

Surreal, mischievous, idiosyncratic - this novel is beautifully written in a style unlike anything I've ever come across before, and not without a good dose of political/social satire as well. The clash between the traditional and the modern is rendered so adeptly in prose by one of Central America's most iconoclastic writers, Miguel Angel Asturias. A gem of a novel.

[Andrew · Rating 4 out of 5]

A complete head-trip. William S. Burroughs and the Popul Vuh mashed together. I can honestly say I've never read anything this strange before in my life. The story is frantic and never follows a linear path. The writing is consistently sensual and "poetic."

[Mario · Rating 4 out of 5]

Filled to the brim with magical imagery. For fans of silvery, surreal storytelling.

[David Corbet · Rating 5 out of 5]

One of my favorites!

[Frank Ashe · Rating 5 out of 5]

Why are there so few editions of this work? It was brilliant!

[Scott · Rating 4 out of 5]

First off, Mulata is not a book to take on a vacation. It is a long and complex and requires concerted and sustained time and attention. It is not a book that makes much sense when read here and there in the free moments of a trip.

Miguel Angel Asturias (1899-1974) was a Guatemalan author who won the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1967, the second Latin American to win the prize after the Chilean poet Gabriela Mistral in 1945. He is best known for El Señor Presidente (1946), a surreal dictatorship novel. I’ve had Mulata for a long time, from the days in the 1970s and 1980s when Avon Bard was the most noteworthy publisher of Latin American fiction in English translation in paperback. Avon Bard books were uniform in design (white spine, back cover, upper front cover(mostly); a bold Sans Serif font; eye-catching color illustration on the cover). I always noticed them on bookstores shelves. Once I read the Avon Bard edition of Gabriel García Márquez’s One Hundred Years of Solitude, I became a dedicated buyer and reader of the series. They were a strong formative influence in the early years of my adult reading life, and I have missed their presence since the series came to an end in the late 1980s.

Asturias published Mulata in the early 1960s, when the Boom period of Latin American fiction was fledging. I have never considered Asturias a Boom author, because he was of an older generation, and Mulata does not share the main trait of Boom fiction, magical realism. Still, for the sake of context I wish that I had read this book back when I first read the magical realists, whom I thought were radically blurring the real and the magical as they defamiliarized the real while treating the magical with familiarity. But compared to what Aturias achieves in Mulata, magical realists like Juan Rulfo, Carlos Fuentes, Julio Cortázar, Gabriel García Márquez, or José Donoso seem timid to me now.

As I read Mulata, I struggled with how to describe it but finally came to think of it as a folk novel. The stories and traditions out of which Asturias builds the book reminds me of the tales in John Bierhorst’s collection Latin American Folktales : Stories from Hispanic and Indian Traditions (2003). There is no distance between the ordinary and extraordinary, natural and supernatural, this world and the divine, not unlike the mythos of the Ancient Mediterranean. In Mulata, Asturias creates an animist universe. The book also reminds me of the 14th C Chinese folk novel Monkey by Wu Cheng-en, which tells the story of the monk Tripitaka’s journey to the west for Buddhist scriptures; Tripitaka is aided by three divine animal figures–a monkey, a dragon, and a pig–and they encounter or initiate many wild adventures before finding the scriptures. The blurb on the cover of Mulata from the National Observer references Rabelais, Baudelaire, Joyce, and Rimbaud. While I can see connections to the latter three, Rabelais’s Gargantua and Pantagruel–with its wild, exuberant, episodic, anything goes, anything can be imagined narrative–seems a perfect predecessor for Mulata.

So let me take another jab at a description: Mulata is a phantasmagoric folk novel, grounded in a world which mixes Mayan and post-conquest (that is, Christian) mythologies, and whose mortal, divine, and category shifting (mortal← →divine) characters inhabit a landscape with few divisions, fewer as the novel progresses. If magical realists blur the line between the magical and real to create the frisson of an uncanny liminal state, Asturias jumps into the world of Mulata with both feet, mucking about, muddying everything, producing and reproducing characters, settings, and storylines that grow larger and larger, like the appetites of the eponymous characters of Gargantua and Pantagruel. This is not a polite book.

It is broken up into three sections and thirty one titled chapters, each a free standing story, linked in a larger narrative chain. From the table of contents, Asturias seems to be an ethnographer–a Mesoamerican Brothers Grimm?–who has collected a lot of stories and found a unifying thread. From this perspective, Mulata is Asturias mapping out that thread, and the novel does feel like a–subway(?)--map networking Mesoamerican myths, culture, and nature.

The first section focuses on a primarily pre-Hispanic, Mayan myth world, and the narrative is initially built around four characters: Celestino Yumi, aka the Fly Wizard, a poor woodcutter; his wife Catarina/Niniloj; and two supernatural characters, the Corn Devil, aka Tazol, and Mulata. Celestino goes to market day in a nearby village with his fly open, acting the fool. Everyone in that village and his home village are embarrassed by his behavior, including his wife and best friend. Celestino has acted the way he does on a bet with Tazol, who wants Catalina for himself and offers Celestino his best friend’s wealth in compensation. Celestino is not admirable. He acts the fool, alienates others, and sells his wife to obtain his friend’s wealth, because he has always wanted to be rich. Nice guy, the fool as hero. He has regrets, though, after Catalina is whisked away by Tazol in a hurricane wind. Celestino misses her, the companion of his poverty, and he is so distraught that he attempts suicide, but he is such a fool that he manages only to hang himself by his foot. Do we pity him? Tazol does, saves him from hanging upside down, and changes the terms of the deal. Instead of victimizing Timoteo, Tazol directs Celestino to find a bag of gold coins at the bottom of a cave, and later much more gold, which allows him to build a very successful farm, making Timoteo jealous. Tazol still benefits from the deal, because he takes other wealth seekers who venture into the cave and sells their blood to the capitalists, industrialists, and owner-class who exploit the poor. The devil is a nimble opportunist who can pity the fool and always find ways to pursue his business and succeed. Tazol also gives Celestino a farm diorama in a box, which is full of miniaturized farm buildings and implements. When Celestino removes them, they magically become full-sized. Unexpectedly, he finds a figurine of his wife Catalina in the box. Tazol, such a good demon, returns to Celestino his wife rather than keep her. Celestino has not had to sacrifice anything, and he still becomes a wealthy man. Quite the deal with the devil. But Celestino remains an untrustworthy fool, for while he takes everything else out of the box he leaves his wife in it. What happened to his regret, his suffering because of her absence?

On another market day in the nearby village, our fool hero meets Mulata, who bewitches him with her cleavage, They marry and return to Celestino’s village, Quiavicús. When they have sex, she only allows to him to take her from behind, a “back moon,” because it turns out that she doesn’t have a vagina. Mulata is a demon who doesn’t feel anything but desperately wants to, so she is violent with Celestino, hoping that he will be equally violent with her, but he is unwilling to follow her lead into sado-masochism. To continue her pursuit of pain/feeling, Mulata brings a bear into the house. Celestino’s infatuation wilts in the face of Mulata’s strange behavior, and he thinks nostalgically again about Catalina, deciding to get her out of the box, because after all Celestino is just a poor woodcutter and he misses his wife. Awww!! When Catalina comes out of the box, she is a dwarf rather than full-sized. Despite her size and Celestino’s betrayal, she dedicates herself to her fool husband. When Mulata loses control of the bear (surprise surprise), Catalina saves her; she cannot, though, cure Mulata’s addictions to pain and smoking (tobacco? cannabis?). Given all of Mulata’s chaos, Catalina just wants to be alone with her husband, so she tricks Mulata into climbing into the cave where the moon resides during the day and leaves her lots of weed. Catalina blocks up the entrance, yet despite all the pot Mulata gets out, but as an erupting volcano. Everyone flees, and Celestino’s farm and wealth are buried in lava. This time Tazol does not step in to save Celestino.

Through many more adventures, Celestino continues to be the fool, make more bad choices, get in trouble, and need to be saved. Although Asturias introduces many more characters, most of them supernatural, throughout the book, the structural center is the Celestino-Catalina-Mulata triangle. In this mythic landscape, the characters are transformed again and again, but the power struggles between them remain a constant, becoming expressions of the larger forces in Asturias’s conception of Mesoamerican myth. I could continue moving from adventure to adventure, jump down all the book’s rabbit holes–all are Alice-like transformations–but I won’t.

Bodies are transformed. Celestino learns from the Boar People (Sauvages) how to return Catalina to her regular human size. When Tazol tries to make off with her again, because dwarves are a hot item and the Corn God is still attracted to her, Celestino hangs on, and Catalina stretches back out to normal size. Given their experiences–that is, their near helplessness before supernatural forces–Catalina and Celestino decide to become sorcerers and head to the city of Tierrapaulita, where God (the Christian God) does not go because it is inhabited by the ancient indigenous devil, Cashtoc, and a host of animist demons, giants, and dwarves that fill the natural world. Tazol remains persistent and impregnates Catalina through the navel, and she gives birth to the demi-demon, Tazolito. Celestino remains a fool and dares Catalina, who resents how he has treated her, to turn him into a dwarf, which she does. A dwarf demon, Huasanga–a vagina thief–is attracted to Celestino and marries him, but Catalina still loves her man, so she turns him into a giant to put him out of the reach of Huasanga, but Huasanga’s ardor remains unabated. When she says that she wants to make it with a giant, the other giants are offended and throw her in a cesspool, where she befriends the flies, who become her protectors. Life is transformation. Still, for all of his foolishness Celestino is the constant sexual lodestar of this book. Besides physical transformations, the book is also freighted with identity shifts. Once Catalina becomes a sorcerer, she takes on a new name, Giroma. As a dwarf, Celestino becomes Chiltic. These identity transformations, layerings really, become much more important in the second and third sections of Mulata.

In the transition between the first and second sections, Asturias charts a shift from pre-Hispanic to post-Conquest myth. There is a church in Tierrapaulita, and the priest plots to import holy water in coconuts. The plot fails, because Huasanga turns the coconuts into the vaginas she has stolen, including Catalina’s, which she stole as recompense for losing Celestino, as both dwarf and giant. But, just as with other characters in the book, the priest is not fully defeated and returns to the fight with Cashtoc and crew, who after more weird battles decide to abandon Tierrapaulita. Cashtoc’s animism leads him to see the universe as a unified creation to which all beings, natural and supernatural, belong, while Christianity treats humans as separate and alienated. When the Christian devil, Candanga, shows up, he institutes “Breeding Time” in order to produce more people to inhabit hell. Cashtoc had intended to destroy Tierrapaulina, but he does not. Once again, the world Asturias creates in Mulata is not marked by death but by transformation.
In the second section, Tierrapaulita has been abandoned by the old indigenous demons and replaced by a Christian devil and a Christian Hell, not unified with the world but separate from it. Still, while Cashtoc and company stalk off, Celestina, Catarina, Tazolita, and Huasanga all turn back and return to Tierrapaulita, which becomes a space where new and old orders clash and transform one another. Again, what dominates the book is transformation, and identity shifting/layering speeds up. The new priest, Father Chimalpin, throws down a purple glove as challenge to the devil, but an indian picks it up, seemingly unaware of the challenge. The indian turns out to be Celestino, with his fly open. He has come into the church with his fly open, so we are back to the beginning of the book with Celestino as fool. What goes around comes around; everything changes, and everything stays the same.

To combat the devil, the priest grows 11,00 hands to grapple with him, but with 11,000 hands and 11,000 arms the priest becomes a spider, revealing the demon at his core, a luciferized being. The new sexton is Jerónimo de Degollación, who is also Mulata. Celestino is a poor indian, pockmarked by small pox; his face has the same number of pockmarks as the priest has arms. Celestino is also possessed by Candanga and goes by many names, names of those he has known who have died and who live on through him. Celestino and Mulata almost manifest their old identities, but they resist because they masquerade in the new Christian world. Nonetheless, Asturias makes sure the old order remains transparent in the new. Mulata is not only the sexton, but she is also Cashtoc, who–no surprise–has not abandoned the city after all.

Amongst all these transformations, identity shifts and layerings, Asturias returns to desire, sex, and marriage as unifying themes. In a fight between demons, Celestino/Candanga/pockmarked old man/hedgehog marries, fights, and has SM sex with Mulata/Cashtoc/Sexton/Moon. The Mulata conglomerate being is penetrated by all the hedgehog spines of the Celestino conglomerate being. They are married by the priest-spider and his 11,000 arms and hands. In marriage, syncretic combinations: Mulata and Celestino, sexton and hedgehog, Cashtoc and Candanga, the pre-hispanic and the hispanic, the old devil and the new devil. To interrupt the marriage–Celestino married again!!--Catalina and Huasanga storm the church, and they drag Mulata off to be hacked up and reduced by half: one lip, one eye, one ear, one leg, one breast, etc., and no vagina, which was stolen by Huasanga. Mulata’s reduced body and its pieces are tossed into the river, where she/they are lusted after by Celestino, who is still lusted after in turn by Huasanga.Under the control of Catalina, Mulata ends up as the casasola, the sorcerers’ castle, where she takes on a new name, Yapole Icue. Half Mulata combines with a skeletal woman to become whole. Responding to a set of questions from the skeletal woman, Mulata confirms that she will take back her sex whatever its condition, so they steal her vagina back from Huasanga.

As the Mayan and the Christian mix, clash, and transform–changing, changing, changing–sex is the force that motivates the narrative of Mulata. For this review, I have worked through the novel’s primary narrative threads which Asturias spins out from Celestino, Catalina, and Mulata. ←I have jumped down these rabbit holes to consider some of the transformations that develop out of them. Given the complex network of stories that Asturias deploys and the cultures that mix it up in Guatemala and Mesoamerica, I can’t believe that I have done little more than scratch the surface or jumped down a few of the caves, rabbit holes, or pock marks that Asturias scatters through the novel. I feel like I need more ethnographic knowledge of Mayan culture and the syncretic hybrids of Mayan, Spanish, and European cultures that Asturias taps for Mulata. The third, very short section seems to be a quick mopping up, not a conclusion or a tying together of threads but one more reflection of the messy melange that is the novel. The priest has suffered small pox, and he has as many scars as Celestino or the spider priest who took on the hedgehog, which also the pockmarked equivalent of 11,000 spikes. He calls for a healer rather than a doctor, and the healer suggests sleeping with a virgin with a rash as a mutually beneficial cure for the rash and pockmarks. The sexton, now without Mulata, seeks out the virgin with a rash for himself only to end up in bed with a snake. Clashing cultural symbols! As the sexton runs back to the church covered only by a sheet, a massive earthquake strikes, and the priest rides into the sky on a mule. As Tierrapaulta crumbles, the sentences of the last chapter break into elliptical fragments. Reminds me of the last section of the poet Vicente Huidobro’s poem, Altazor, where the poet falls faster and faster until language is stripped away from him. In Mulata, all that is left is the shaking earth, a folk apocalypse from an apocalyptic folk. Overwhelming book.

[Brent Hayward · Rating 3 out of 5]

Starts off strangely and then gets decidedly stranger from there. Minor demons converge on a possessed town and do battle as the protagonist attempts to become a warlock, accompanied by his wife and evil mistress. The modern world and church poke in periodically and don’t fare very well. A little hard to follow, like a nightmare.

[Saúl Guerra Razo · Rating 3 out of 5]

Fue increíblemente difícil terminar Mulata de Tal, pero al final si te da algunas sorpresas y satisfacciones como lector.
Fueron muy bellas algunas de las historias Guatemaltecas que el escritor narra, pero en general el estilo de redacción fue difícil de seguirlo

[Meile Kuliesiute · Rating 5 out of 5]

¡Maravilla incomparable!

Pasajes para recordar:

* "¡Y qué naturaleza tropical de ascuas con ojos, por esos ojos sabemos que la noche ve; de silencios con oídos, por esos aretes de oro pendientes de invisibles orejas sabemos que la noche oye; de ascuas de algún metal que se quemó en el cosmos y por cuya luz sonámbula sabemos que la noche está llena de ausentes!"

* "Déjame esta noche. Duerme junto a esas matas de maguey de aroma embriagante. Y vuelve mañana al reír el alba a este rincón en que tengo mi silla de plumas negras. Otro seré, porque cada día soy otro. Ninguno se acuesta ni amanece el mismo si ha pasado por el sueño.
¿Oyes, en lo hondo? No te inquietes, es la masa de un torrente que cae entre jazmines de espuma."

* "Cantaba, reía, bailaba, se hacía perseguir por arqueros tan hábiles que disparaban contra ella sus flechas calculadas para el levísimo rasguño, sensación de múltiples heridas, en que se retorcía, madeja de mieles que pasaba de la ebriedad de licores de colibrí, caña y maguey, a la ebriedad del humo gesticulante, hasta caer fuera del tiempo, en una vaga eternidad roedora, dos lunas de alquitrán sus pupilas inmensamente abiertas, dos coágulos solitarios en medio del espanto absoluto, el pavor, el miedo, la congoja, el llanto a gritos, llanto de alguien sin dueño, sin asidero, y allí mismo, el furor suicida, el querer deshacerse de su imagen presente a cambio de una futura imagen, golpeándose la cara contra lo infranqueable, y allí mismo el aullido, el más angustioso aullido al encontrarse de nuevo con su yo lunar, vertebral, horadado, pasivo, climatérico, y allí mismo al replegarse con tristeza de simio que se afila las uñas en los dientes al oir, la noticia, la terrible noticia: Yumí, su marido, tenía el esqueleto de oro."

* "(...) aquel infeliz muñeco de barro que salió expulsado del Edén por reclamar al Señor haberle dado compañera hecha de hueso y no del humo de aquella planta fabulosa. Una compañera de humo, a la que gobernaría con su aliento, como el céfiro a las velas; la guardaría en husos de hilo de humo, husos que ahora llaman cigarrillos; y la absorbería por boca y narices para llenarse con ella de una paz que cambiaría sus venosos pensamientos por la arterial alegría de la realidad hecha sueño."

* "Pero ¿cuántas veces era yo en aquella multiplicación de mi figura en los dientes de los Gigantes que no dejaban de sonajear en sucesivas definiciones una risa incortable? Botaban los dientes de tanto reir, y les salían otros, y otros, y otros para la misma risa torrencial, limpios espejos de agua en los que mi imagen se multiplicaba envuelta en humo, como carbón que se apaga."

[Mike · Rating 4 out of 5]

Well that was an adventure! Mulatta is not your typical read. Nor do I think its anyone's typical read. And it is nothing like Asturias' previous work, The President, for which he won the Nobel Prize.

That said, it is an incredible, unique, and rewarding journey. Asturias takes the reader on a journey with Celestino Yumi, an Indian peasant. On that journey we encounter all manner of spirits, devils, creatures, magical transformations, and cosmic events. However, the book is not a fantasy story. Its an immersion into pre-christian era spiritual world. That world is not a simple good versus evil duality. Everything, including animals and nature itself, is populated by spirits with an ever-changing agenda of their own. The "human" characters are not above this chaos but part of it. All is flow.

The chaos of Mulatta is, at times, frustrating and tiring. Yet it is this very reaction that allows the reader to feel the richness, confusion, and fear this world engenders. For the reader, like the characters, there is no stable place to stand. One clearly feels immersed in a world that is not one's own.

Not an easy read, nor one that provides memorable scenes or quotes. But the experience of the book is well worth the investment.

[Tom Melis · Rating 4 out of 5]

Mulata lezen is alsof je zwaar onder invloed de Droomvlucht in de Efteling instapt. De Guatemalese indiaan Celestino Yumí sluit een deal met een duivelse geest, waarbij hij zijn vrouw verkoopt voor eeuwige roem. Vanzelfsprekend krijgt hij spijt. De oplossing die hij voor zijn probleem vindt, lokt een hele reeks nieuwe problemen uit, de een nog waanzinniger dan de anderen. Mede op basis van inheemse mythes schreef Miguel Angel Asturias deze hallucinante roman, die eerlijkgezegd niet lijkt op iets wat ik eerder heb gelezen. In 1967 ontving hij de Nobelprijs voor de Literatuur voor zijn werk.

[Jon · Rating 2 out of 5]

Rated two stars for my enjoyment of it. However, I think that may be my failing as a reader. It has a Joyce-like obscurity that probably would have been improved by reading alongside some Cliff Notes. No idea if it should be a recommend.

[Graziella (AuxPetitsBonheurs) · Rating 1 out of 5]

Un 7/20 pour la première partie, qui reste à peu près compréhensible. FUYEZ.