The Cyclone: (Peter Owen Modern Classics S.)

'We Americans have lost the world'. Controversial on publication for its explicit and prophetic criticism of globalisation and big business, "The Cyclone" is one of nobel laureate Miguel Angel Asturias' most impassioned works. Drawing a moving, heartfelt portrait of his native Guatemala, the book describes the struggle of those who were lured to work on the banana plantations for a large American company. Beaten down by back-breaking labour, the tropical heat , poverty and disease those who live in this unforgiving landscape nevertheless show themselves to have a strong community, rife with song, mythology and black magic. "The Cyclone" is also the story of Lester Rimes, a disaffected American who rises to lead the resistance against the Banana company, organising a local cooperative and funding ever more imaginative schemes to thwart big business. The whole is a gripping magical realist novel that pre-dates and indeed was instrumental in ushering in the literary 'boom' in Latin America, influencing writers such as Gabriel Garcia Marquez, Mario Vargas Llosa and Isabel Allende.

About the Author :
Miguel Angel Asturias (1899-1974) was born in Guatemala. In 1923 he left to study at the Sorbonne in Paris where he stayed for the next ten years. His 1933 novel El Senor Presidente led to his exile from his native Guatemala for its implicit criticism of the dictatorship then in power. After the fall of the regime he spent many years as Guatemalan cultural attache to embassies in Argentina and France. He was awarded the Nobel Prize for literature in 1967.

Review :
'Together with Mario Andrade, Alejo Carpentier, and Jorge Luis Borges, Asturias made himself one of the great rennovators of Latin American Fiction, preparing the terrain for later generation of magical realists like Juan Rulfo and Gabriel Garcia Marquez.' - Professor Gerald Martin 'Miguel Angel Asturias has a strong intelligence, a warm sense of reality and a teeming imagination nourished by the legends and superstitions of his country. When these qualities come together - as in The Cyclone - the result is striking.' - Sunday Times 'One of the outstanding writers of Latin America, The Cyclone is a tale full of atmosphere in its statement of human and social problems ' - Guardian 'The Cyclone is an evocative bulldozer of a book.' - Observer 'Full of political passion' - Times Literary Supplement 'If vaguely disturbing it is redeemed by the glittering clarity with which the author picks out the characteristics of the sweltering Caribbean coastline terminating in a devastating, impressionistic vision' - Scotsman