Though Arévalo Martínez’s fame has waned, he is still considered important because of his short stories, and one in particular: The man who resembled a horse[1] and the biography of president Manuel Estrada Cabrera, ¡Ecce Pericles!.

[2] Arévalo Martínez was director of the Guatemalan National Library from 1926 until 1946, when he became for a year Guatemala’s representative before the Pan American Union in Washington, D.C.

Arévalo Martínez and the other members of his generation were crucial for the literature and arts of the 20th century in Central America as they abandoned Modernism in search of new trends.

[6] He wrote for several newspapers and magazines, both nationally and internationally;[7] In 1916, Arévalo Martínez lived for a while in Tegucigalpa where he was working as editor in chief for El Nuevo Tiempo, but went back to Guatemala a few months later.

In 1921 he was appointed as correspondent for the Real Academia Española and on 15 September 1922, along with Alejandro Córdova, Carlos Wyld Ospina and Porfirio Barba Jacob founded the newspaper El Imparcial.

The story is deliberately decadent, luxuriant in tone, and its version of sexual desire owes much to Friedrich Nietzsche and Sigmund Freud, who were very popular at the time Arévalo Martínez wrote it.