Juan Rulfo

A classic of Mexican modern literature about a haunted village. As one enters Juan Rulfo's legendary novel, one follows a dusty road to a town of death. Time shifts from one consciousness to another in a hypnotic flow of dreams, desires, and memories, a world of ghosts dominated by the figure of Pedro Páramo - lover, overlord, murderer. Rulfo's extraordinary mix of sensory images, violent passions, and unfathomable mysteries has been a profound influence on a whole generation of Latin American writers, including Carlos Fuentes, Mario Vargas Llosa, and Gabriel García Márquez. To read Pedro Páramo today is as overwhelming an experience as when it was first published in Mexico back in 1955.

“Among contemporary writers in Mexico today [1959], Juan Rulfo is expected to rank among the immortals.” — The New York Times Book Review The legendary title novella from one of Mexico’s most influential writers is published here in English for the first time on the 100th anniversary of his birth. This lost masterwork, collected with his previously untranslated stories, marks a landmark event in world literature. Juan Rulfo (1917-1986), Mexico’s most important and influential author of the twentieth century, received numerous awards in his lifetime, including the esteemed Cervantes Prize, and his work served as the literary precursor of “magical realism.”

Pedro Páramo y El Llano en llamas representan dos aportaciones fundamentales a la literatura contemporánea en lengua castellana. Tanto en la novela como en la colección de relatos, Juan Rulfo nos transporta con gran maestría de lo real a lo fantástico por medio de un estilo vigoroso y poético. Profundamente enraizada en lo popular, la narrativa de Juan Rulfo describe con conmovedora fuerza la cotidiana realidad de un mundo a la vez violento y lírico. Si los cuentos de El Llano en llamas describen, con exquisita sobriedad, el mundo de los campesinos de Jalisco, Pedro Páramo lleva el dolor mexicano a su forma más universal, trascendiendo -sin olvidarla- la historia real. De ahí que, en su conjunto, la obra de Rulfo sea un clásico de las letras hispanoamericanas contemporáneas.

Rulfo, Juan