I am a bit of a completist when it comes to fiction set in Guatemala.
The most notable exception from my 'dunnit' list being Antigua Vida Mia. I saw the movie, and that was enough for me.
Norman Lewis's 1957 novel is a new acquisition and I am looking forward to it, especially after seeing that positive blurbing by the creator of 007.
Rare indeed is the novel about Guatemala which completely eschews the stereotypically problematic aspects of its history. (Even Severina by Rey Rosa is about a woman hueviando books from a little shop in the capital.)
The most notable title of the past decade has been Tiempos Recios by the late Mario Vargas Llosa which is situated unashamedly either side of the 1954 coup.
Lewis on the other hand, noted that while the 'astute reader' would discover certain similarities between the plot of his story and the then recent history of Guatemala, these were to be regarded as 'accidental'.
Other fictional titles tackling the murkier side to this land which I would recommend are El Cojo Bueno by Rodrigo Rey Rosa, Cascabel by Arturo Arias and The Long Night of the White Chickens by Francisco Goldman.
While I do believe that El Señor Presidente by Miguel Angel Asturias remains — objectively — the best novel written about Guatemala, my own personal favourite is Up Above the World by Paul Bowles.
He too makes use of the 'un-named Latin American republic' ploy, but if you read it with some basic knowledge of Guatemala, you do know.
On a separate note, I was reminded recently of efforts by various real world locations to claim or disclaim their appearance in seminal works of the western canon.
For instance, there are numerous spots around the Caribbean asserting their selfsameness with Stevenson's Treasure Island, particularly in the Virgin Islands, yet anyone who has read the novel will surely understand that it is not actually set in the tropics.
Then there is the discussion about the country in Conrad's Nostromo. Juan Gabriel Vásquez's The Secret History of Costaguana begins from the assumption that Conrad was dog whispering 'Colombia' and sets about reclaiming said nation's history from foreign misrepresentation.
Yet a brief Google search reveals that Venezuela and Guyana also want in on this. For my part, I long ago concluded that this composite had one key component that hardly anyone ever mentions: Costa Rica.
We know that Conrad was there during his days as a merchant seaman. And although Costa Rica has lately been famed for its comparative stability, lack of an army and so on, it didn't used to be — and in fact its nineteenth century history features precisely the sort of factional military putsches with armies marching from the central highlands to the coastal zone, which play such an important role in the novel. (And San José has a big pile of gold in a museum, just like Bogotá.)
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