On its eventual publication in Mexico in 1946, El Señor Presidente quickly met with critical acclaim.
The themes of Asturias's novel, such as the inability to tell reality apart from dreams, the power of the written word in the hands of authorities, and the alienation produced by tyranny, center around the experience of living under a dictatorship. The style of El Señor Presidente influenced a generation of Latin American authors. His use of dream imagery, onomatopoeia, simile, and repetition of particular phrases, combined with a discontinuous structure, which consists of abrupt changes of style and viewpoint, springs from surrealist and ultraist influences. The character of the President rarely appears in the story but Asturias creates a number of other characters to show the terrible effects of living under a dictatorship. Asturias began writing the novel in the 1920s and finished it in 1933, but the strict censorship policies of Guatemalan dictatorial governments delayed its publication for thirteen years. One of the most notable works of the dictator novel genre, El Señor Presidente developed from an earlier Asturias short story, written to protest social injustice in the aftermath of a devastating earthquake in the author's home town.Īlthough El Señor Presidente does not explicitly identify its setting as early twentieth-century Guatemala, the novel's title character was inspired by the 1898–1920 presidency of Manuel Estrada Cabrera. Asturias makes early use of a literary technique now known as magic realism. A landmark text in Latin American literature, El Señor Presidente explores the nature of political dictatorship and its effects on society.
The cover of the English translation, from Macmillan PressĮl Señor Presidente ( Mister President) is a 1946 novel written in Spanish by Nobel Prize-winning Guatemalan writer and diplomat Miguel Ángel Asturias (1899–1974).
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