RESOURCE REVIEW: Hunahpu & Xbalanque, Hero Twins of Popol Vuh

The book, published by Senderos Books (Vancouver, Canada, 2019) has been very carefully researched, and is a delight to read. The author tells the tale in a lovely, appealing way and the story unfolds at an attractive - almost ‘racy’ - pace: even if the reader knows the basics of the story in advance, (s)he will constantly be in a hurry to find out what happens next…
At 225 pages long, the book is of standard novel length. It sports a beautiful front cover design by Steve Radzi but otherwise lacks illustrations; needless to say, the text is more than strong enough to carry the story on its own merits. It is, in the author’s introductory words, ‘a real fairy tale, that a Mayan grandfather would have told his eagerly listening grandchildren - somewhere in the shade of the majestic ceiba tree - in very, very ancient times.’

‘Supernatural beings’: the Hero Twins, depicted by Mexican muralist Diego Rivera in 1957