Promotional Information

A new translation of the legendary Mexican classic of magic realism which inspired the works of Gabriel García Márquez, Mario Vargas Llosa and a Netflix film adaptation of the same name

About the Author

Juan Rulfo (1918-1986) is the author of what is probably the most important novel in Mexican literature. Pedro Páramo was published in 1955 and went on to be translated into 45 languages, sell over a million copies in English alone and initiate an entire literary movement. Rulfo was also an anthropologist and photographer who wrote one other book, The Burning Plain, a collection of short stories.

Douglas J. Weatherford, Professor of Hispanic Literature and Film at Brigham Young University, has published extensively on Juan Rulfo, with particular emphasis on the author's connection to film. In 2017, Weatherford released the first English-language translation of Rulfo's second novel, El gallo de oro (The Golden Cockerel and Other Writings, Deep Vellum).

Reviews

'Pedro Páramo is not only one of the masterpieces of twentieth-century world literature but one of the most influential of the century's books' - Susan Sontag

'Rulfo's moment in the English-speaking world has finally arrived. His novel's conception is of a simplicity and profundity worthy of Greek tragedy, though another way of conveying its unique effect might be to say that it is Wuthering Heights located in Mexico and written by Kafka' - Guardian

'This brilliant Mexican novel, written in 1955, describes a man's search for his unknown father with the haunting clarity and strange logic of a recurrent nightmare' - Esquire

'A strange, brooding novel. . . . Great immediacy, power and beauty.' - Washington Post

'A powerful fascination . . . vivid and haunting; the style is a triumph.' - New York Herald Tribune