Wordplay with Guatemalan Arturo Arias.

AuthorMartinez, Elizabeth Coonrod
PositionLITERATURE - Interview

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In an official ceremony in November 2008, Arturo Arias received a prestigious gold medal as he was honored with the Guatemalan National Prize in Literature. He follows in the footsteps of other great writers, like Augusto Monterroso (1997), who have received this award named for Guatemala's Nobel Laureate: Miguel Ángel Asturias. Like Asturias, Arias has lived and written in France, and like Monterroso, he has lived in Mexico. He is the only one of the three, however, who has also established a professional career in the United States, where he has primarily resided since 1988.

Asturias brought Maya philosophy and fables to contemporary literature, and Monterroso contributed his unique style of very brief but scintillating accounts. Arturo Arias is another cutting-edge Latin American writer, who in his 50s has already published six novels and various other books and articles. He has also been a university professor and academic for many years and, between 2001-2003, he represented the hemisphere as president of the Latin American Studies Association (LASA).

Arias wrote his first novel, Después de las bombas (1979) when he was in his early twenties. Both of his next two books--a novel and a book of literary criticism--were selected for Casa de las Américas awards. A few years later, Arias was contacted to help write the screenplay for the film El Norte (1984, director Gregory Nava). This brought him recognition in the United States as he toured international film festivals with the producers, describing conditions in Guatemala. After teaching at the University of Texas in Austin for two years, and at the University of Río de Janeiro in Brazil for another year, Arias settled into a position at San Francisco State University for ten years. In addition to stints as a visiting professor at UC-Berkeley, Arias took a new position at the University of Rediands in 2000. Then, after a semester at Tulane University in New Orleans, he returned--now as senior professor--to the University of Texas in 2007.

Arias' novels are complex, with a linguistic structure accessible only to fluent readers. His works are polyphonic and often come from multiple perspectives (and eras). They are recognized for capturing la jerga , Guatemalan colloquial speech and dialect. With both Maya and contemporary Western settings and history, they also reveal humorous and scathing commentaries. Two have been published in English translation, and the first...

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