A new translation of El Llano en llamas, an iconic collection of short stories that changed the course of Mexican and Latin American literature.
Since its publication in 1953, Juan Rulfo's The Burning Plain (El Llano en llamas) has become Mexico's most significant and most translated collection of short fiction. Set largely in a distressed rural region of the state of Jalisco known as El Llano Grande (the burning plain of the title), the seventeen stories of this anthology trace the lives of characters in the wake of the Mexican Revolution (1910-1917) and the Cristero Revolt (1926-1929). A father carries his fatally wounded son through the night in search of healing; a young girl's prized cow is swept away by a flood, along with her family's harvest; and a group of campesinos spend all day walking across the immense, barren Llano that the government has given them to farm. Through it all, Rulfo rejects moralizing and nostalgia, capturing instead the hushed reality of a landscape and people marked by violence and the weight of hardship and injustice.
Rulfo's writing, often compared in importance to that of William Faulkner, Anton Chekov, and Gabriel Garcia Marquez, is characterized by a laconic literary prose and the distinctive language heard throughout the rural communities of southern Jalisco. These qualities come alive in Douglas J. Weatherford's vibrant new rendition of Mexico's most celebrated collection. Seventy years after its first publication in Spanish, Rulfo's work speaks to a new generation of readers.
"Among contemporary writers in Mexico today [1959], Juan Rulfo is expected to rank among the immortals."-The New York Times Book Review
"What is remarkable about these sketches is that the characters are rendered with deep honesty; their faults are highlighted, celebrated in a way that is reminiscent of Chekhov's peasants."-Publishers Weekly
Rezensionen / Stimmen
Rulfo airs a worldview dark enough to make Cormac McCarthy look like P.G. Wodehouse...Spectral stories shot through with violence and sorrow, and beautiful for all that. (Kirkus, Starred Review) Weatherford's fresh new translation of this seminal 1953 collection from Mexican writer Rulfo (1917-1986) lays bare the enigmatic potency of its stories about love, poverty, and violence...As characters trek across vast and arduous desert terrain, it can be hard to distinguish the real from the imaginary, which adds to the book's power...This will please Rulfo's devotees and earn him new ones. (Publishers Weekly) Among contemporary writers in Mexico today [1959], Juan Rulfo is expected to rank among the immortals. (New York Times Book Review) What is remarkable about these sketches is that the characters are rendered with deep honesty; their faults are highlighted, celebrated in a way that is reminiscent of Chekhov's peasants. (Publishers Weekly) To read Rulfo's stories is to inhabit Mexico and, in the process, to have Mexico inhabit you. (NPR) Reading these stories during an election year where political rhetoric about violent immigrants at the US/Mexico border is being used to rabble rouse America's rural poor highlights how little the power structures have changed. Rulfo doesn't provide any false hope. Instead, he allows Mexico's agricultural working class to speak and act for themselves, painting a full and complex picture of economic refugees, no matter their origins, as if to say: You, too, would act like his characters if put in their place. (Full Stop)
Sprache
Verlagsort
Maße
Höhe: 228 mm
Breite: 154 mm
Dicke: 15 mm
Gewicht
ISBN-13
978-1-4773-2996-2 (9781477329962)
Copyright in bibliographic data and cover images is held by Nielsen Book Services Limited or by the publishers or by their respective licensors: all rights reserved.
Schweitzer Klassifikation
Juan Rulfo (1917-1986), who was born in the Mexican state of Jalisco, is best known for two seminal works that altered the course of Mexican and Latin American literature: El Llano en llamas (1953) and the novel Pedro Paramo (1955).
Douglas J. Weatherford is a professor of Hispanic literature and film at Brigham Young University. In addition to The Burning Plain, he has also translated Rulfo's Pedro Paramo and The Golden Cockerel and Other Writings.
Translator's Note by Douglas J. Weatherford
They Have Given Us the Land
La Cuesta de las Comadres
Because We're So Poor
The Man
In the Early Morning
Talpa
Macario
The Burning Plain
Tell Them Not to Kill Me!
Luvina
The Night They Left Him Alone
Paso del Norte
Remember
You Don't Hear Dogs Barking
The Day of the Collapse
The Legacy of Matilde ArcAngel
Anacleto Morones
