Pedro Páramo

With an Introduction by Gabriel García MárquezA new translation by Douglas J. WeatherfordIn 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.

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, 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, 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, A strange, brooding novel. . . . Great immediacy, power and beauty., A powerful fascination . . . vivid and haunting; the style is a triumph.

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).