Juan Rulfo is one of the most important writers of twentieth-century Mexico, though he wrote only two books��he novel Pedro P獺ramo (1955) and the short story collection El llano en llamas
(1953). First translated into English in 1967 as The Burning Plain, these starkly realistic stories create a psychologically acute portrait of poverty and dignity in the countryside at a time
when Mexico was undergoing rapid industrialization following the upheavals of the Revolution. According to Ilan Stavans, the stories����epth seems almost inexhaustible: with a few strokes,
Rulfo creates a complex human landscape defined by desolation. These stories are lessons in morality. . . . They are also astonishing examples of artistic distillation.��To introduce a new
generation of readers to Rulfo�� unsurpassable literary talents, this new translation repositions the collection as a classic of world literature. Working from the definitive Spanish edition of
El llano en llamas established by the Fundaci籀n Juan Rulfo, Ilan Stavans and co-translator Harold Augenbram present fresh translations of the original fifteen stories, as well as two more
stories that have not appeared in English before����he Legacy of Matilde Arc獺ngel��and ��he Day of the Collapse.��The translators have artfully preserved the author�� ��easantisms,��in
appreciation of the distinctive voices of his characters. Such careful, elegiac rendering of the stories perfectly suits Rulfo�� Mexico, in which people on the edge of despair nonetheless
retain a sense of self, of integrity that will not be taken away.
