Mulata by Miguel Ángel Asturias

Mulata Reviews

• 
  Vit Babenco

  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

  
  
  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

  "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

  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

  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

  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.
• 
  Michael

  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.
• 
  Thomas

  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"
• 
  Keli

  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"
• 
  Verónica Villegas

  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
• 
  Daniel

  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

  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

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

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

  One of my favorites!
• 
  Frank Ashe

  Why are there so few editions of this work? It was brilliant!
• 
  Saúl Guerra Razo

  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
• 
  Mike

  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.
• 
  Graziella (AuxPetitsBonheurs)

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

  
  https://5cense.com/19/693.htm
• 
  Timbo

  Possibly the strangest book I've ever read, strange and wonderfully bizarre.
• 
  Jesse

  Mulata / Miguel Angel Asturias, tr. Gregory Rabassa (1968)
• 
  daphny drucilla delight david

  this book has such dense information, there are so many characters stories going on at the same time, that it boggles my mind that anyone bothers talking about dune
• 
  John

  SCIENCE FICTION WHICH I DO NOT LIKE