"Le Clézio is an expert on early Amerindian mythology and culture and produced a translation of Maya mythology into a French in Les prophéties du Chilam Balam"
[15] The Mayan
Chilam Balam books are usually collections of disparate texts in which Mayan and Spanish traditions have coalesced and are in the
Yucatec Maya language (in European script). Le Clezio ... is a speaker of at least a half-dozen languages, three of which are pre-Columbian,
[16] including Maya, which he learned while living in a Yucatecan village during the 1970s.
[17] When asked about his devotion to native cultures, Le Clezio replied
The dawn of peoples is important because we seem now to be living in the dusk. You have the sense that we are getting near the end [17]
"Le Chilam Balam" is a collection of songs, prophecies and calendars kept through oral tradition. These books contain the observations, calendars and prophecies of the seer or magician named Balam, and they are named after their place of origin.
[18]