The Medicine Man

In his most celebrated work, Mexican writer Francisco Rojas Gonzalez offers a rare blend of literature and indigenous anthropology. Inspired by his fieldwork in Chiapas, Mexico, these 13 stories reflect the author’s preoccupation with the totality of Mexican life and capture his heralded ability to penetrate the contradictions of human nature. The book is a dramatic presentation of myths, religious beliefs, and customs of Mexican Indians framed in their rigid, overpowering code of ethics. It served as the basis for the 1954 film Roots, which won the FIPRESCI Prize at the Cannes Film Festival of 1955.