The Superman Philosophy

John Walker is a professor of Spanish at Queen’s University.

For decades the countries of Central America have been plagued by civil
war, interregional strife, state-controlled terrorism, and often
foreign-inspired revolution. This novel is set in Guatemala, but the
events it describes might easily have happened in El Salvador or
Honduras.

In 1957, the British archeologist Roger McTavish discovers a group of
monuments allegedly erected by Alvaro Manchez, a pre-Discovery legendary
Mayan leader and thinker. McTavish translates the inscriptions on the
monuments and then disappears—or is “disappeared”—but not before
he initiates a lengthy correspondence about his work with a fellow
archeologist, Edward Milward. When Milward dies of cancer, his papers
are inherited by his daughter Linda and her husband, David Anderson, who
set out for Guatemala to seek out the monuments and find the
translations of the Superman philosophy, which purports to be a powerful
synthesis of ideas that explain human existence. Their adventures there
constitute the action of this thriller, which also depicts the political
situation in 20th-century Guatemala.

As one might expect, given the traditional role of the United States in
Central America, the CIA is involved, as are multinationals, mysterious
organizations like “The Society,” Rain Forest Action, the UN Mission
for Human Rights Verification, and other groups. Drugs, terrorism,
blackmail, corrupt generals, supine journalists, and the like all figure
prominently in a novel that is concerned less with philosophy than with
human rights abuses, the oppression of indigenous people, the
suppression of knowledge, and the stifling of ideas that might endanger
the political status quo. The mythical leader’s philosophy is a mere
peg on which to hang this cloak-and-dagger novel’s themes of
corruption, betrayal, and international intrigue.