A review by flyingfox02
Mr. President by Miguel Ángel Asturias

dark

3.5

Señor Asturias I’m so sorry for doubting you without knowing you, I couldn’t help it after seeing the comparisons to Gabriel García Márquez. (My biggest fans know how much One Hundred Years of Solitude wrung me out and left me to dry, as the saying goes or whatever.) But this book wasn’t like that at all. 

 

Mr. President is a brutal and heavy tale of dictatorship in an unnamed country, satirising Manuel Estrada Cabrera’s regime in Guatemala. “The President” himself doesn’t feature much in the story, only appearing in a few chapters and merely mentioned by others in the rest. Instead the novel focuses on the citizens’ lives, which reveal how the depravity of the man in power has seeped through all corners of society, from top government officials to the working class. 

 

This is a dark and depressing novel, filled with violence and tragedy. I did not enjoy reading it whatsoever. The scene with the mother and baby in prison was particularly harrowing that I physically winced. It was also difficult to empathise with any character because they’re just not good people… 

 

That being said, the writing is absolutely exquisite. David Unger deserves so much praise for his brilliant translation. The bleakness of the story is compounded by the imageries of despair sprinkled throughout. (I’ll share some highlights below.) Apparently it’s also full of Guatemalan patois and allusions to Mayan mythology but these went over my head as my e-copy of the book doesn’t include referential notes. 

The sprawling city, made larger by his own exhaustion, shrank in the face of his despair.

In this dismal place, the ills of life seemed incurable.

A strange wind blew across his plateau of silence.

The song rubbed little glass splinters into her flesh.

Two tears, hot as nails difficult to pull out, twisted their way down his rough, masculine cheeks, so unused to crying.

He was barely half a tangerine and she was larger than a grapefruit. (This is pretty funny.)

Alligator-shaped clouds with sparks of light on their backs sailed over emerald fields, the dense mountain forest that birds had transformed into music boxes. (I'm gobsmacked.)

 

Though not pleasurable or even entertaining, this is a very impressive book. I’m intrigued by Asturias’ other acclaimed work, Men of Maize, but Wikipedia says it’s his “least understood novel” and I am not ready for that.