In 1923, after receiving his law degree from the Universidad San Carlos de Guatemala, Asturias he settled in Paris, where he studied ethnology at the Sorbonne and became a militant Surrealist under the influence of the French poet and leader of the André Breton movement. His first great work, Legends of Guatemala (1930), describes the life and culture of the Maya before the arrival of the Spanish. This work brought him critical acclaim both in France and in his native Guatemala.
Upon your return to Guatemala, Asturias founded and edited The Air Diary, a radio magazine. During this period he published several volumes of poetry, beginning with Sonnets (1936). In 1946 he embarked on a diplomatic career, continuing to write while serving in various countries in Central and South America. From 1966 to 1970 he was the Guatemalan ambassador in Paris, where he established his permanent residence.
In the 1940s the talent and influence of Asturias as a novelist he began to emerge with his passionate denunciation of the Guatemalan dictator Manuel Estrada Cabrera, Mr. President (1946). On Corn men (1949), a novel generally considered his masterpiece, Asturias it represents the seemingly irreversible misery of the Indian peasant. Another aspect of the misery, the exploitation of the Indians in the banana plantations, appears in the epic trilogy that comprises the novels Strong wind (1950), The green potato (1954), and The eyes of the Buried (1960).
The writings of Asturias were collected in the three volumes Complete works (1967). That same year he was awarded the Nobel Prize for Literature “For his living literary achievements, strongly rooted in the national traits and traditions of the indigenous peoples of Latin America“.
Asturias He died in Madrid on June 9, 1974. He is buried in the Père Lachaise cemetery in Paris.