Miguel Ángel Asturias (October 19, 1899 – June 9, 1974) was a Guatemalan writer and diplomat. He was born in Guatemala City and died in Madrid.

In 1917, Miguel Asturias studied law at the Universidad de San Carlos de Guatemala where he participated in the 1920 uprising against Guatemalan dictator Manuel Estrada Cabrera. He graduated in 1923 and went to Paris, France to further his education at the Sorbonne. While living in Paris, he was influenced by the gathering of writers and artists in Montparnasse and began writing poetry and fiction.

Asturias returned to Guatemala in 1933 where he worked as a journalist before serving in his country's diplomatic corp. When the government of President Jacobo Arbenz fell in 1954, he was banned from the country by Carlos Castillo Armas. While living in exile he became a well known author with the release of his novel, Mulata. Eventually, the new president of Guatemala appointed him as the ambassador to France in 1966, the same year he won the Lenin Peace Prize.

He was awarded the 1967 Nobel Prize in literature "for his vivid literary achievement, deep-rooted in the national traits and traditions of Indian peoples of Latin America."

Asturias spent his final years in Madrid, Spain where he died in 1974. He is buried in the Cimetière du Père Lachaise in Paris.

Works

• Leyendas de Guatemala ("Legends of Guatemala") (1930)
• Sonetos ("Sonnets") (1936)
• El señor Presidente ("The President") (1946)
• Hombres de maíz ("Men of Maize") (1949)
• "The Banana Trilogy"
  • Viento fuerte ("The Cyclone") (1950)
  • El papa verde ("The Green Pope") (1954)
  • Los ojos de los enterrados ("The Eyes of the Interred") (1960)
• Week-end en Guatemala ("Weekend in Guatemala") (1956)
• El alhajadito ("The Bejeweled Boy") (1961)

Adapted from the article Miguel Asturias, from Wikinfo, licensed under the GNU Free Documentation License.