AUTHOR
Arturo Arias is Director of Latin American
Studies at the University of Redlands. Co-writer
for the screenplay for the film El Norte
(1984), his most recent novel in English is
titled After the Bombs (Curbstone Press,
1990). Author of five novels in Spanish: Despues de las bombas (1979), Itzam Na (1981),
Jaguar en Llamas (1989), Los caminos de
Paxil (1991) and Cascabel (1998), and
winner of the Casa de las Americas Prize and the
Anna Seghers Scholarship for two of them, he is
a specialist on ethnic issues and subaltern
identity, a subject that is a central theme in
both his fiction and his academic work. In 1998
he published two books of literary criticism,
one on Guatemalan 20th Century fiction, La
identidad de la palabra (The Identity of the
Word), and another one on contemporary
Central American fiction, Gestos
Ceremoniales (Ceremonial Gestures). He has
finished a new novel in Spanish, Sopa de
caracol, and in 2001 published a critical
edition of Miguel Angel Asturias's Mulata,
and The Rigoberta Menchú Controversy,
dealing with the recent polemic about Rigoberta
Menchú testimonial. He has served as
President of the Latin American
Studies Association for 2001-2003.
Works by Arturo Arias from Curbstone Press:
