We’re lucky to even know about the Popol Vuh today. This sacred creation story of the Maya was passed down orally for millennia and then written down in hieroglyphics, which Spanish colonizers systematically destroyed with book burnings. But a young Dominican friar stumbled across a Latin transcription of the K’iche’ text and translated it into Spanish—and that translation, by chance, survived. In Popol Vuh: A Retelling by Ilan Stavans, it’s transformed into a gripping illuminated narrative of birth and rebirth, gods and humans, and a teeming world of owls, jaguars, feathered snakes, and mountains.
London-based artist Gabriela Larios captures that teeming world with vibrant folk art–inspired collage, infused with her love for the natural world and her childhood in El Salvador, ancestral land of the Maya. In this artist talk, she takes us behind the scenes of her illustrations, which Blogcritics calls “splendid” and “worth the price of admission on their own.” She share scenes from the sketchbook where she made early drawings, images of works in process, and the inspiration she draws from Maya storytelling and cosmology. “Maya culture,” she says, “has so much imagination and knowledge that needs to be shared with the world.”
“Something I explore deeply in my illustrations is the relationship between Maya culture and the environment in which they were living, an exuberant land full of plants and full of life,” says Gabriela Larios.
The world of the Popol Vuh is filled with resplendent birds, from the owl messengers of the lords of Xibalba to Izmaki, city of birds, which “was said to contain a feather of every bird ever created by Heart of Heaven, Heart of Earth.”
“This is the story of Princess Ixkik’, who, upon hearing the story of the calabash tree, reached it and wanted to touch it.” Read an excerpt from Popol Vuh: A Retelling on Guernica.
View the Illustrations
Meet the Illustrator
London-based Salvadoran artist and illustrator Gabriela Larios received her Master of Arts from Camberwell College of Arts, UK in 2007 thanks to an Alban Scholarship. She creates whimsical and colourful collage illustrations that celebrate her deep love of children’s books, textiles and folk art. Her creative world derives from her interest in storytelling and the natural world. There is a naive and playful spirit captured in her work and a strong connection between memories of her childhood in El Salvador and her body of work: tortoises, fish, plants, birds and all the colourful creatures and elements found in her art. Her work has been exhibited in London, Europe and abroad and has appeared in various international books and magazines.
About the Book
About the Author
Ilan Stavans is the publisher of Restless Books and the Lewis-Sebring Professor of Humanities and Latin American and Latino Culture at Amherst College. His books include On Borrowed Words, Spanglish, Dictionary Days, The Disappearance, and A Critic’s Journey. He has edited The Norton Anthology of Latino Literature, the three-volume set Isaac Bashevis Singer: Collected Stories, The Poetry of Pablo Neruda, among dozens of other volumes. He is the recipient of numerous awards and honors, including a Guggenheim Fellowship, Chile’s Presidential Medal, the International Latino Book Award, and the Jewish Book Award. Stavans’s work, translated into twenty languages, has been adapted to the stage and screen. A cofounder of the Great Books Summer Program at Amherst, Stanford, Chicago, Oxford, and Dublin, he is the host of the NPR podcast "In Contrast."
by Ilan Stavans
Illustrations by Gabriela Larios
Foreword by Homero Aridjis
2020 Foreword INDIES Gold Winner for Multicultural Fiction
2020 Mass Book Awards Must Read Fiction
An inspired and urgent prose retelling of the Maya myth of creation by acclaimed Latin American author and scholar Ilan Stavans, gorgeously illustrated by Salvadoran folk artist Gabriela Larios and introduced by renowned author, diplomat, and environmental activist Homero Aridjis.
Hardcover ISBN: 9781632062406
Publication date: Nov 10, 2020