Pedro Páramo - by Juan Rulfo (Paperback)

About the Book

A masterpiece of the surreal that influenced a generation of writers in Latin America, Pedro Pâaramo is the otherworldly tale of one man's quest for his lost father. That man swears to his dying mother that he will find the father he has never met--Pedro Pâaramo--but when he reaches the town of Comala, he finds it haunted by memories and hallucinations. There emerges the tragic tale of Pâaramo himself, and the town whose every corner holds the taint of his rotten soul. Although initially published to a quiet reception, Pedro Pâaramo was soon recognized as a major novel that has served as a touchstone text for writers including Mario Vargas Llosa and Josâe Donoso. Now published in a new translation from the definitive Spanish edition by celebrated Rulfo scholar Douglas J. Weatherford, and featuring a foreword by Gabriel Garcâia Mâarquez, this new edition of the novel cements its place as one of the seminal literary texts of the twentieth century.

Book Synopsis

Now an original Netflix film, directed by Rodrigo Prieto, cinematographer of Killers of the Flower Moon

NATIONAL BESTSELLER

"One of the best novels in Hispanic literature, and in literature as a whole." -Jorge Luis Borges

The highly influential masterpiece of Latin American literature, now published in a new, authoritative translation, and featuring a foreword by Gabriel Garcíiacute;a Máaacute;rquez

A masterpiece of the surreal that influenced a generation of writers in Latin America, Pedro Páramo is the otherworldly tale of one man's quest for his lost father. That man swears to his dying mother that he will find the father he has never met--Pedro Páramo--but when he reaches the town of Comala, he finds it haunted by memories and hallucinations. There emerges the tragic tale of Páramo himself, and the town whose every corner holds the taint of his rotten soul. Although initially published to a quiet reception, Pedro Páramo was soon recognized as a major novel that has served as a touchstone text for writers including Mario Vargas Llosa and Joséeacute; Donoso. Now published in a new translation from the definitive Spanish edition by celebrated Rulfo scholar Douglas J. Weatherford, and featuring a foreword by Gabriel García Márquez, this new edition of the novel cements its place as one of the seminal literary texts of the twentieth century.

Review Quotes

Praise for Pedro Páaacute;ramo:

A New York Times Book Review Editors' Choice

A New York Times Book Review Paperback Row Selection

"[Pedro Páramo] shows its readers how to read all over again, the same way The Waste Land or Ulysses does, by bending the rules of literature so skillfully, so freely, that the rules must change thereafter . . . It is a story of all revolutions: the landless against the landlords, the dispossessed against the powerful. It is a story of usurpation, extraction and sexual violence. Of stealing land, settling it and exploiting it and its people. In other words, it is a story of nation-building in the Americas . . . It makes more sense to map Rulfo within a constellation of writers like T.S. Eliot, Samuel Beckett, and Franz Kafka, who wrote in a kind of 'foreign' tongue, in that they allowed strangeness to seep into the familiar and turn the everyday into the uncanny . . . I began reading this third edition, [translated] by [Douglas J.] Weatherford, with skepticism. But I grew more and more enthusiastic as I went along. His translation is, by far, the best of Rulfo in English."-Valeria Luiselli, New York Times Book Review

"A work of pitched contradiction . . . This magnificent language achieves the apocalyptic dread of the original . . . Weatherford's translation captures the primeval struggle at its core . . . I think the new translation is worth all the effort that has gone into producing it. It moves the story forward, so to speak, amidst the wider tale of literature. And it is a gorgeously engaging read at that."--Nick Hilden, The Millions

"For readers of Latin American fiction, Pedro Páramo is a founding text . . . Douglas J. Weatherford's [translation] moves Rulfo's lyricism into a melodic, recognizably American voice . . . Rulfo forged a new language for sadness that is uniquely Latin American."--Miranda France, Times Literary Supplement

"A strange, brooding novel . . . Great immediacy, power, and beauty."--Washington Post

"Among contemporary writers in Mexico today Juan Rulfo is expected to rank among the immortals."--Selden Rodman, New York Times Book Review

"The essential Mexican novel, unsurpassed and unsurpassable . . . Extraordinary."--Carlos Fuentes

"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."--Susan Sontag

"That night I didn't sleep until I'd read it twice; not since I had read Kafka's Metamorphosis in a dingy boarding house in Bogotá, almost ten years earlier, had I been so overcome."--Gabriel Garcíiacute;a Márquez

"A simplicity and profundity worthy of Greek tragedy . . . Wuthering Heights located in Mexico and written by Kafka."--Guardian

"The silences yawn in Rulfo's writing. Its rhythms seem to slow time, and reality's edges fray into a strange gulf . . . Pedro Páramo is like hunting for a key in a building that is collapsing around you . . . One of the more remarkable journeys in literature."―Chris Power

"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 Páramo its particular flavour."―Full Stop

"This is the thir

About the Author

Juan Rulfo (1918-1986) was born in Sayula, in the state of Jalisco, Mexico. His collection of short stories, The Burning Plain, and Pedro Páramo established him as a major literary figure in Latin America.