The highly influential masterpiece of Latin American literature, now published in a new, authoritative translation, and featuring a foreword by Gabriel García Márquez

A masterpiece of the surreal that influenced a generation of writers in Latin America, Pedro Páramo is the otherworldly tale of one man’s quest for his lost father. That man swears to his dying mother that he will find the father he has never met—Pedro Páramo—but when he reaches the town of Comala, he finds it haunted by memories and hallucinations. There emerges the tragic tale of Páramo himself, and the town whose every corner holds the taint of his rotten soul. Although initially published to a quiet reception, Pedro Páramo was soon recognized as a major novel that has served as a touchstone text for writers including Mario Vargas Llosa and José Donoso.

Now published in a new translation from the definitive Spanish edition by celebrated Rulfo scholar Douglas J. Weatherford, and featuring a foreword by Gabriel García Márquez, this new edition of the novel cements its place as one of the seminal literary texts of the twentieth century.

With an Introduction by Gabriel García Márquez A new translation by Douglas J. Weatherford In this stunning masterpiece of the surreal, Juan Preciado sets out on a strange quest, bound by a promise to his dying mother. Embarking down a parched and dusty road, Juan goes to seek his father, Pedro Páramo, from whom they fled many years ago. The ruined town of Comala is alive with whispers and shadows. Time shifts from one consciousness to another in a hypnotic flow of desires and memories, a world of ghosts dominated by the tyranny of the Páramo family. Womaniser, overlord and murderer, Juan's notorious father retains an eternal grip over Comala. Its barren and broken-down streets echo the voices of tormented spirits sharing the secrets of the past in an extraordinary chorus of sensory images, violent passions and unfathomable mysteries.

For a writer so reserved in what he saw into print, Juan Rulfo has had a disproportional influence on writers of literature in Spanish, and beyond, on a par with Borges and Gabriel Garcia Marquez. El Llano in flames provides a pithy and moving expression of life in central and western Mexico in the decades following the Revolution. These stories have the quality of an oral testimony to harsh years, delivered in a spare and exquisite voice. They are amongst the best short stories ever written. This new translation marks the first time this masterpiece of Latin American literature been made available to English-language readers beyond North America since the book was first published in Spanish in 1953.

"Juan Rulfo is our most important author." Yuri Herrera, author of Signs Preceding the End of the World "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."