My Lake at the Center of the World

More than 120 years ago after the death of President Justo Rufino Barrios, the clergy and the exiled Guatemalan Maya in rural Guatemala had essentially no voice in its subsequent history of fifty years of forced labor and loss of land to the new coffee economy. In ¨ My Lake at the Center of the World, ¨ Robert Hinshaw, a disciple of Tax, uses oral histories to recreate in fiction the first of two companion novels. Hinshaw's own interviews of Maya professionals-lawyers, artists, politicians and religious leaders from 1963 through the 80s provide the backdrop and the characters of the next novel, ¨ The Rape of Hope. ¨ The first novel is ethnographic, full of indigenous rituals and beliefs of early nineteenth century. The second is more political. Ethnic relations and political tensions, social and religious between Indian and Ladino are the underlying themes of both novels.