Nahuatl Stories: Indigenous Tales from Mexico

(Paperback)

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Nahuatl Stories is the first translation into English of one of the classics of Mexican literature. The universality of the pre-Hispanic indigenous people of central Mexico, the Nahuas, backbone of the Aztec empire, is present not only in their magnificent architecture and the vibrancy of their paintings. Nahuatl literature conveys the customs, traditions, rituals and beliefs of a culture with a very complex socio-political structure whose cosmology sees gods, human beings and nature coexist and interact on a daily basis. Today, more than 1.5 million people still speak Nahuatl, the second most widely spoken language in Mexico after Spanish. These fourteen stories, collected and translated into Spanish by Pablo Gonzalez Casanova, were first published in 1946. This edition presents the English translations facing the original Nahuatl texts, and includes the author's introduction and the introduction to the Fourth Edition of 2001 by Miguel Leon-Portilla.

Author Bio

Pablo Gonzalez Casanova was a leading Mexican linguist, writer, journalist, and academic. He was a lecturer at the Universidad Nacional de Mexico and carried out extensive research on the Nahuatl language in Teotihuacan. He was also a member of the Mexican Language Academy and one of the founders of the Mexican Institute of Linguistic Research of the Universidad Nacional. Desiree Gezentsvey is an award-winning New Zealand playwright, poet, and translator with a passion for works that reflect social issues of multicultural character.