Legendes du Guatemala [Signed]

Marseille: Les Cahiers Du Sud, 1932. Very Good. Marseille: Les Cahiers Du Sud. 1932. First French Edition, from a total print run of 1000 copies, this copy one of 100 copies printed on alfa and stamped "SP." Signed at front free endpaper by Asturias to French screenwriter and director Carlo Rim with brief inscription. Octavo. 135 pp. Black and white illustrations. Illustrated wraps. Toning and spotting to wraps with chipping and creasing to edges; small patch of loss at crown; creasing and split along spine. Brief separation at front hinge but binding holding. Occasional spotting and smudging to interior, most heavily at "Legende du Sombreron" though text legible throughout. Still a Very Good copy of the second edition of Asturias' first published book, an exploration of pre-Columbian Mayan myths and how they shaped Guatemalan identity.

Enhanced with a brief but glowing preface published from a letter from the French poet Paul Valéry: "As for the legends themselves, they have left me rather drunk. Nothing has seemed to be me so strange--I mean more strange to me, to my ability to expect the unexpected--how these story-dream-poems confound so strangely the beliefs, the tales, and the mores of every age of an entire people..." (p. [9], our translation).