Product Description
A major figure in the history of post-Revolutionary literature in Mexico, Juan Rulfo received international acclaim for his brilliant short novel Pedro Páramo (1955) and his collection of short stories El llano en llamas (1953), translated as a collection here in English for the first time. In the transition of Mexican fiction from direct statements of nationalism and social protest to a concentration on cosmopolitanism, the works of Rulfo hold a unique position. These stories of a rural people caught in the play of natural forces are not simply an interior examination of the phenomena of their world; they are written for the larger purpose of showing the actions of humans in broad terms of reality. ... Read more

Customer Reviews (10)

Hard stories of a harsh time and place
There are no superfluous words, nothing to ease you into the harshness.Each story begins abruptly in the midst of struggle and hardship. Each ends with death and ashes predominate, and scant resolution suggested.The lives described are marked by isolation, coercion and limited options, lived in rocky and inhospitable terrain and in exposed conditions.The writing is consistent with the scenes described, sparse, succinct and unadorned.It makes for a powerful reading experience, but not necessarily a winsome one.

what? did we read the same book?
as i sit here and contemplate the eloquent reviews of "the burning plain" i continually ask myself...did we read the same book?i found this book erratic and confusing and a struggle to complete (much the same way i felt after reading "the road", but that is another story).perhaps i am just not a literati, but i want a story i can follow and characters i can relate to.guess i am just not able to get a feel for life south of the border.

MCLC students

The Burning Plain is about fifteen emotional stories. The stories give the reader a lot to think about. Many of these stories are short interesting stories that give the reader what to think about, action, sad parts, and contains nasty events when people are killed. We recommend the book to the readers because it is a very interesting book because the way many short stories are put into one book. The book will make the reader feel grossed out because in the ways some people are killed. All of these stories take place in a rural place. For, example Talpa takes place in a village as well as Luvina. In the story Macario the setting is in a house.

strange but captivating writing
Rulfo's style, like his stories, is sparse, quiet, and often harsh.He offers disturbing tales of miserable people in barren places; yet there is also a strange beauty to be found in his work.I can think of few, if any, examples of such perfect prose.The characters--though they suffer--seem close at hand and perfectly real, and he gives the most incredible descriptions of landscapes that I have ever read in my life.It is easy to see his connection to "magical realism"--it is largely in the way he sets the tone of the stories, and in those unbelievably vivid descriptions--but his work does not fall into that category.There is no escaping the terribly blunt reality he creates.

Whether you are interested in Latin American literature or not, if you are at all interested in prose, you should read this book.

give art a chance.
The Burning Plains is a compilation of short stories that Juan Rulfo published on diferent publications at different times. it's also at the moment, besides his masterpiece Pedro Paramo, the only material available.
The shorts stories are chilling, incledibly well written. It's superb, and the english translation more than acceptable.
To me the highlights of the book are "Talpa" and "they have given us the land" (the opener on the spanish version, but some reason is not on this english edition)but the whole book is amazing.
I bought this book for my girfriend as an exorsism from jennifer Wiener's "Good in Bed" I was worried about the translation but it didn't dissapoint me.
the ideal way to read The Burning Plain is in spanish, but since this book is not that surreal as pedro paramo is, this tranlation works just fine.
I hope this brief note helps you to choose a good book. ... Read more

Customer Reviews (2)

Rulfo's best
Rulfo shines as a "cuentista" and I think this collection of
stories establishes him as northern Mexico's poetic voice. The desolation of Mexican life here is truly haunting yet somehow beautiful.I recommend these stories over his novel "Pedro Paramo", even though the novel is quite interesting.

beautiful sadness
I read this book in Spanish for the language, then in English for extra clarity.It is beautifully sparse, much like a black and white photograph - its surface is dark and bleak and colorless, yet the texture which can be read and felt beneath the surface is absolutely breathtaking.Rulfo creates a world I am both entranced by and afraid of. ... Read more

Product Description
La obra de Juan Rulfo (1917 1986) es sin duda la creación literaria mexicana que ha recibido mayor reconocimiento dentro y fuera de su país. La novela Pedro Paramo tuvo una larga gestacion. Rulfo la menciona por primera vez en una carta de 1947, y puede trabajar en ella hasta terminarla entre 1953 y 1954, gracias a una beca del Centro Mexicano de Escritores. En 1954 publica adelantos de la misma en tres revistas y en 1955 aparece como libro. Entre los admiradores de esta obra maestra, habiendo escrito tambien sobre ella, figuran Gabriel Garcia Marquez, Jorge Luis Borges y Susan Sontag. Pedro Paramo recoge lo mas profundo de Mexico y las formas y técnicas literarias más avanzadas de su siglo. Pocas obras tocan al lector mexicano como ésta, considerada también un clásico de la literatura universal.(Texto definitivo de la obra establecido por la Fundación Juan Rulfo ... Read more

Customer Reviews (61)

Don't Make 'Homework' of This Great Novella, Please!
Before attempting my own review of Juan Rulfo's unique masterpiece, I decided to read a few earlier reviews, just for fun. In actuality, it wasn't much fun; many of the reviews were obviously written by high school students who had been required to read "Pedro Páramo" as a class assignment. I wouldn't relish the task of choosing books for assigned reading, though I acknowledge that "somebody needs to do it." But this is a poor choice. Not only is it a 'difficult' book in its multifarious narrative style, but it requires a kind of detached emotional maturity that few adolescents have developed. And it demands a context in history, at least a minimum knowledge of the Mexican Revolution, of 'latifundia' and its enduring effects of damage to Mexican culture, and of the syncretic "Aztec Catholicism" of Mexico. Unless a teacher is prepared to spend a semester establishing that context, reading "Pedro Páramo" will be confusing and frustrating for even the 'above-average' student.

I suppose those strictures might apply to many adult readers, also. However, most adults who come upon this work, first published in 1955, will have already read some of the 'bestsellers' of later Magic Realism -- Gabriel Garcia Marquez, Mario Vargas Llosa, Isabel Allende, Roberto Bolaño -- and will thus be primed for Juan Rulfo's innovative narrative structure. This novella IS widely regarded as the progenitor, for better or worse, of virtually all contemporary Latin American fiction.

"Pedro Páramo" is a ghost story, or rather, a story told by ghosts, to ghosts, in a ghost village. The title character is a pre-revolutionary latifundista -- an arrogant and amoral landowner who 'rules' the peasants of the village of Comala (presumably in Jalisco) by intimidation. His father was the local 'cacique' as well, and his son would succeed to exactly such unbridled dominion, except for a fatal accident and for the onset of the Revolution. Pedro's domination of his community is, in a sense, genetic. His father raped or seduced virtually every female of his generation in the village, and Pedro has followed his example. The initial narrative of the novella, Juan Preciado, is the son of a woman victimized by Pedro, who escaped to a larger city-world; Juan has promised his dying mother to return to Comala and exact some acknowledgement or retribution from the Father he's never known. But when he reaches Comala, he learns that Pedro is dead, the village itself is dead, the life it represented is dead, he himself is dead ... indeed, Life itself may be dead.

I first read "Pedro Páramo" in the 1970s, when I was a grad student at the University of Mexico in Puebla. It didn't seem at all hard to accept its ghostly realism then. Mexico was, and is, a land friendly to ghosts, with its pervasive amalgamation of pre-Conquest and Catholic religiosity. Sin, penitence, absolution, and intercession are all part of the psychological vocabulary there. Violence is never far away, as the current drug-cartel wars prove. "Machismo" is so intrinsic to Mexican life that the word has entered the language of "El Norte" as a pejorative. Hallucinogenic mushrooms, peyote, pulque, and mescal make all Reality 'magic'. Actually, the first Mexican novel of hallucinatory realism was written by an American in English: "Under the Volcano" by Malcolm Lowry, set iaround the same time as "Pedro Páramo" but written decades earlier.

I've re-read "Pedro Páramo" as a response to works by Vargas Llosa. I wanted to know if it was a powerful and original as I remembered. It is.

It's just over a hundred pages in length, and the Spanish is as tangy as a chipotle pepper. It truly deserves to be considered a "world classic." A translation into English is available. The translation has received mixed reviews, but any version of this masterpiece has to be worth reading.

Mexican Authors
When the author made a character disappear In Cien Años de Soledad I liked it. The author of Páramo over uses the device.

Ben A. Esparza

Pedro Paramo
Didn't really know what to expect, and this was a disappointment. He's a good writer, but the subject matter simply does not fascinate me.

Yellowish
It's a very good book to read but I expected the book to be in better conditions.

Awesome
I was in search of this book for last couple of years and finally got it here at Amazon. The quality of print is great and I take this opportunity to thank Amazon for doing this great service.

Regards,
Anirban Biswas. ... Read more

Product Description
'The Burning Plain and Other Stories consists of fifteen pieces ranging from brief anecdotes, casual incidents that remind one of 'happenings' in pop art to short stories. Many, indeed, are short-short stories in deceptively elemental language and narrative technique; yet all have a sharp impact on the reader.... With a few bare phrases the author conveys a feeling for the bleak, harsh surroundings in which his people live.'. ... Read more

Customer Reviews (3)

El llano en llamas
Uno de los mejores libros que he leido.Las historias son realmente muy buenas.Recomendado para todos aquellos que les gusta leer.

eXCELENTE
El libro es muy bueno y sobre todo da esa información tan valiosa del mundo latinoamericano. Su descripción de la vida es espectacular

Lo mejor de la literatura mexicana
Este es el tipo de relatos que uno espera ver del México de la fantasía, de los sueños. Excelente libro. ... Read more

Product Description
Estas cartas a Clara incitan a repasar el milagro de la literatura.Releer a Rulfo es en realidad leerlo: es volver al origen de los mitos, a la raíz de todos los relatos, a la semilla del arte de decir las cosas para siempre. ... Read more

Product Description
Juan Rulfo was one of the great literary innovators of the twentieth century. His 1955 novel Pedro Páramo is considered one of the foundational classics of magic realism, predating One Hundred Years of Solitude by more than a decade. Lesser known are his haunting photographs of Mexico, which exhibit remarkable parallels to his prose. The photographs, mainly taken between 1945 and 1955, do not tell stories: they present. The images of people and their land, women in their traditional dress, musicians with their instruments, capture the calm, quiet, inner rhythms of Mexico's rural population. Rulfo extracts unique moments through his photographs; his images of desolate, abandoned buildings, their walls destroyed by artillery shells, are expressions of his nation's painful history. His quietly dramatic landscapes recall the work of Ansel Adams and Edward Weston while displaying a style that is truly his own.

This collection of 175 images is the only comprehensive collection of Juan Rulfo's photographs available. The six essays preceding the images illuminate the photographs and pay tribute to one of Mexico's most enduring literary and visual artists. ... Read more

Customer Reviews (1)

A master of words AND pictures
In addition to being a Nobel-caliber novelist, Rulfo was a world-class photographer. His pictures capture the landscape, architecture, and indigenous culture of Mexico. This book provides a beautiful collection of his work in a well-designed package. I didn't care much for the accompanying essays, however, which are heavy on the type of psychobabble and postmodern philosophy only an art historian could love. If the writing were worthy of the master himself, this would be a five-star book. ... Read more

Product Description
Los ensayos del presente volumen fueron escritos durante la ltima dcada y reflexionan acerca de una serie de temas que se encuentran presentes en la obra de Juan Rulfo.Estos temas pueden resumirse en cuatro conceptos: el espacio, la sociedad, la concepcin de la realidad, y la marginalidad.Ellos exploran la concepcin del espacio tal como aparece tratada en los trabajos literarios y visuales del escritor mexicano; la insersin del autor y de su obra en la circunstancia histrica de la sociedad mexicana de mediados de siglo, as como de los eventos que sus escritos reflejan; las maneras de pensar propias de las poblaciones indgenas y campesinas de Amrica Latina, su concepcin de la realidad y del universo, que generalmente se oponen a las maneras del pensar occidental; y la nocin de marginalidad que permea la obra de Rulfo.Estos conceptos guan el estudio de la obra rulfiana, que aun hoy da genera lecturas ricas y novedosas. ... Read more

Customer Reviews (1)

My favorite Mexican Book
The simple beauty of this book just stuns me, and the way it builds and assembles from something surreal into a simple family story is masterful. Juan Rulfo sold tires and worked other jobs.He was not a fluffy, intellectual writer, and it wonderfully shows. ... Read more

Product Description
Pedro Páramo's estranged son, Juan Preciado, comes to find his father after his mother's death, but instead he finds only a town deserted except for its ghosts. Through a complex narrative told from multiple points of view, which skips forward and backward in time, author Juan Rulfo explores the life of don Pedro, a man who is both a villain and a tragic figure.

This study guide includes the following sections: Plot Summary, Chapter Summaries & Analysis, Characters, Objects/Places, Themes, Style, Quotes, and Topics for Discussion. ... Read more