FOR a writer,he was a man of extraordinarily few words. Juan Rulfo produced only one short novel, “Pedro Páramo”, and a collection of short stories,“El Llano en Llamas” (translated as “The Burning Plain”). Together they comprise fewer than 300 pages. And that, apart from a couple of fragments and a few film scripts, or was it. Yet not only does Rulfo relish a towering reputation in Spanish-language letters. In addition,as has become clear during the commemorations this year marking the centenary of his birth, his work has at least as much relevance for many young Latin American writers as that of successors such as Gabriel García Márquez or Mario Vargas Llosa, or who are far better known to English-speaking readers.
Rulfo was marked indelibly by his childhood. He was born into a family of landowners in the western Mexican state of Jalisco. They lost their lands in the turmoil of the Mexican revolution (1910-17) and the counter-revolutionary Cristero war of the late 1920s. His...
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Source: economist.com