The Maya Book of Creation: The Sacred Text of the Maya

A New Translation of the Popol Vuh

By: Joaquin De la Sierra

Narrated by: Jeffrey Schmidt

Length: 3 hrs and 20 mins

Publisher's summary

The Popol Vuh is undoubtedly the most important Maya text that survived the systematic destruction of the Maya codices at the hands of the Spanish. This is the definitive edition of the Popol Vuh, a new translation that makes the text accessible and enjoyable to listen to.

Moreover, this new edition gives the listener a detailed introduction to the Maya culture, the Maya calendar, the Maya numerals, and a new short story about how Father Ximénez found the Popol Vuh. If you're interested in the ancient Maya civilization, this is the audiobook to download.

©2022, 2023 Joaquin de la Sierra (P)2023 Joaquin de la Sierra

A fascinating, accessible Mayan epic

This is an amazing book, with two very different parts, both excellent. In the first sixty pages, Joaquin De La Sierra provides a compact introduction to the Mayan peoples, their lands and cultures, their encounters with conquistadors, and their survival since then. In the next one hundred eighty pages, he provides a new translation of the Popol Vuh, a Mayan epic poem mostly about the exploits of the heroic twins Hunahpu and Xbalanque.

Both parts are lavishly illustrated with well-chosen pictures, presented either thorough captions that explain just why they belong where they are. I came away with a good feeling for what traditional Mayan lands are like, aspects of their ways of life, and how they told stories in art and text.

The Popol Vuh is a densely packed story full of mythic adventure. There’s an overview of cycles of creation and destruction leading up to the world and humanity as we know them and the lives, victories, and defeats of heroes before the hero twins. Some events explain why animals, aspects of the weather, etc are as they are; mostly, though, the story is just itself. The hero twins advance against increasingly powerful adversaries including the lords of the realm of the dead. They use trickery, loopholes in obligations, and superhuman derring-do - every tactic is fair against evil gods, apparently.

After the twins’ exploits, we learn about the ancestral tribes of the Maya and their leaders. They had a tough start, the god making them deliberately weak in various ways. They needed to seek out a divine patron and help from various powerful voices in the surrounding world. Flourishing took a long time.

The Audible edition, read by Jeffrey Schmidt, is a marvel of its own. He brings great pacing and dramatic flair to the text, along with meticulous pronunciation. I struggle a lot with various Mesoamerican words, and it’s such a pleasure to him them said by someone with many more clues than me. He made the story exciting even with its many repetitions and parallelisms.