Pedro Paramo

Reviews / Votes

Pedro Paramo is not only one of the masterpieces of twentieth-century world literature but one of the most influential of the century's books -- Susan Sontag 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 * Guardian * 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 * Esquire * A strange, brooding novel. . . . Great immediacy, power and beauty. * Washington Post * A powerful fascination . . . vivid and haunting; the style is a triumph. * New York Herald Tribune * With its dense interweaving of time, its routine interaction of the living and the dead, its surreal sense of the everyday, and with simultaneous-and harmonious-coexistence of apparently incompatible realities, this brief novel by the Mexican writer Juan Rulfo strides through unexplored territory with a sure and determined step * New York Times Book Review * No reader interested in the vitality of twentieth century Latin American fiction can afford to miss this work * Chicago Tribune * The silences yawn in Rulfo's writing. Its rhythms seem to slow time, and reality's edges fray into a strange gulf ... Pedro Paramo is like hunting for a key in a building that is collapsing around you ... one of the more remarkable journeys in literature -- Chris Power A founding text for literature in Central and Latin America, revered by Gabriel Garcia Marquez and Mario Vargas Llosa, this short novel is full of miraculous features * Bookmunch * This is the third time Pedro Paramo has been translated into English ... and I can only celebrate that someone has tried so hard to preserve the author's unique voice. An outstanding edition and a game-changing translation * London Magazine * Juan Rulfo's novel defies logic. It is out to evade readers, to tease them for their attempts at understanding. Uncertainties, red herrings, and anxieties abound, all of which give Pedro Paramo its particular flavour * Full Stop * There is no novel more mesmerizing and paradigm-shifting -- Valeria Luiselli * New York Times *