The multidisciplinary and cross-cultural case made in this article is that the novels under consideration draw on indigenous concepts of metaphor, concepts that offer significant differences and broaden the range of possibilities for students of metaphor in the West. The authors of these novels present many-sided analogies as providing the afflicted protagonists access to a reality beyond the ways realism is usually understood in Eurocentric contexts. Although perhaps incidentally, many-sided analogies assist the protagonists of Asturias's (1988) 'Men of Maize' and Malouf's (1996) 'An Imaginary Life' in the recovery of mental health, as well as providing an alternative way of being in the world to the protagonist of Arguedas's (1978) 'Deep Rivers'. (Claudette Kemper Columbus)