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Khan & Greco narrate and illustrate the epic journey of the Maya Hero Twins into the underworld of Xibalba. And back. They draw from familiarity with the Popol Vuh and Maya culture to manifest a compelling illustrated journey that revitalizes America's oldest spiritual and poetic epic.
Perfect for lovers of epic poetry, ekphrasiophiles, historians, Mesoamerican scholars, educators, as well as Maya and Neo-Baroque aficionados.
180 pp. 6x9. Color. Soft Cover. Introduction by Denise Low. Illustrated end papers. ISBN 979-8-31-999595-7 Price: $39.50
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Take a Peek
The Severed Head
What prize compares
to the enemy’s head on display?
One Death rolls Hunaphu's head
from the House of Bats
to the sacred ball court,
then skewers it on a pike
and holds it aloft
while Xibalbans cheer and rejoice.
Ixbalanque turns from grief
and calls together all the animals.
From a squash, leaves, wood and stones
they build for Hunaphu a crude head.
Ixbalanque whispers to rabbit
a secret plan,
then faces One Death on the court.
One Death lobs the severed head,
You have lost. We have won!
One Death laughs.
We shall use his head as a ball,
Ixbalanque says,
and tosses his brother’s head in the air.
As it descends,
he drops one knee
and stops the head with his yoke,
then hits it hard, sends it soaring
past the court.
Reviews
The Popol Vuh as never before, as a living presence in which readers join the Hero Twins on an epic spiritual journey deep into the ancient Maya underworld. The genius of Khan's epic narrative style brings the characters, setting, and plot to life. Greco's intense archetypal figures evoke the timeless quality of a creation parable. Together they create a groundbreaking adaptation which exemplifies the living vitality of the Popol Vuh.
--Denise Low, Kansas Poet Laureate 2007-09
I'm rounding the bend to finish this book, such a terrific work. You capture the essence of this great masterpiece, as if the story stood outside of time, jetting through all the dimensions--like lucid dreaming. Vivid texture in the phrasing -- original, surprising.
--Catherine Anderson, Author, Birdy Poetry Prize winner for 2025
Jemshed Khan's volume brings one of the world's great mythic texts vividly to life, balancing scholarship with storytelling in a way that feels both fresh and deeply rooted.
For readers new to the Popol Vuh, the sacred K'itche' Maya book of creation, trickster heroes, and cosmic battles, Khan offers a clear, engaging introduction situating the text in its historical and cultural context without losing its drama and humor.
Like many epics, the Hero Twins' story echoes Joseph Campbell's Hero with a Thousand Faces: the call to adventure, descent into darkness, trials, trickster wit, eventual triumph. Yet here it feels stranger, wilder – rooted in Mayan myth, where humor and terror mingle, and the narrative twists keep surprising readers.
The book’s heart lies in Khan's translations, rendered in clear, direct, dramatic poetry. The Hero Twins begin their journey to face the Lords of the Underworld with courage, wit, and flashes of arrogance: “Even the dead are watching/ as two boys muscle their way forward,// across the scorpion cold current/ arms raised to the Milky Way.” Soon, they approach the Underworld: “They pass a blue-black severed hand,/ gnawed bones, a skull where jaguars/ have eaten […]// At dusk, one owl transforms/ into a skull with wings [...] / Twins adjust their packs and straps,/ follow her like a pale flighty moon.'
Leonard Greco's full-color illustrations add wild, surreal humor: a fusion of classic Mayan imagery with Alice in Wonderland oddity. Scorpions, jaguars and gods fill the pages with beauty, menace, and cosmic absurdity.
Four Star Clarion Foreword Review
Jemshed Khan reengages the Mayan creation myth Popol Vuh by reimagining the Hero Twins and their tumultuous time in the underworld.
Complemented by surreal images, this book is a work of layered narrative poetry in which the past and present coexist. In contemporary times, a thirteen-year-old (modeled after Khan) in an oil town along the Persian Gulf finds a scepter with a replicated Mayan carving on it. The discovery sparks a lifelong interest in Mayan culture, seen in poems like “Kukulcan 1982,” in which a guard is bribed to allow Khan entrance to the grounds of the pyramid at Chichén Itzá. There, he imagines Mayan warriors superimposed over the present and hears “their spirits ask, // Who shall journey to the underworld / and raise us from the dead? / Who will fight for this sacred land?” Indeed, the serendipity and synchronicity of the boy finding the scepter becomes a part of the power and mythos of the Popol Vuh itself.
The book’s interpretation of the Mayan creation myth is quite direct, and it centers the book most. In it, the Hero Twins—born of Maiden Lady Blood and a slain warrior whose decapitated head merged with a dead calabash tree and brought it back to life—are brash and crafty. They trick their grandmother into believing they are farming but instead play pokolpok, a Mayan ball game. When a bid for a competition on the court comes from the Underworld, the arrogant twins rush to follow the owls, convinced they will beat Lord One Death and take revenge. Unimagined perils await them instead, though their relationship helps them survive.
The poems related to the creation myth are character focused; though tying into hero and villain archetypes, they build on the sympathetic connection between the twins and the ways their relationship strengthens them. They possess warrior skills and fantastical magic. In active scenes, they name each of the seven lords of the underworld and survive beheading. Through it all, they maintain faith in each other and the plans they have hatched.
Most of the poems articulate a particular trial, and the short lines and vivid descriptions have an immersive quality. In surreal settings, flora and fauna are lethal and insects act as informants and assassins. In one poem, a twin manifests mosquitoes from a single leg hair; in another, “screeching snatch-bats / careen through the pitch dark, / ready to tear the boys apart.” Musicality is achieved via subtle rhymes and rhythms.
The twins’ trials conclude with a strange, breathless series of tumbling actions, wherein reversals of fortunes abound. And the book’s final section catapults forward to 1520, when the Mayan culture starts to fall to the Spanish and the Day Keeper works in silence and secret to keep his culture alive, reflecting the timelessness of the central tale: “Our books burned, / our temples looted, / gods transmuted, / but fire and pox / do not silence us.”
This personalized, playful retelling of Popol Vuh, a cultural touchstone, reinterprets the Hero Twins’ rollicking descent into the underworld.
