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Juan Rulfo (1917-1986) was one of Mexico's premier authors of the twentieth century and an important precursor of magical realism in Latin American writing. Rulfo received Mexico s National Prize for Literature (Premio Nacional de Literatura) in 1970, was elected to the Mexican Academy of Language (Academia Mexicana de la Lengua) in 1980, and received the Cervantes Prize (Premio Cervantes), the highest literary award in Spanish, in 1985. Rulfo suffered from lung cancer in his final months and died on January 7, 1986 at his home in Mexico City. Douglas J. Weatherford graduated from BYU in 1988 (B.A. Spanish), served in the Persian Gulf War as a linguist, & after returning received his PhD in Latin American Literature at Penn State University. He has been a professor at BYU since 1995 & currently serves as Head of the Hispanic & Luso-Brazilian Literatures Section.
To read Rulfo's stories is to inhabit Mexico and, in the process, to have Mexico inhabit you. -- Oscar Casares, NPR You can read Rulfo's slight but dense body of work in a couple of days, but that represents only a first step into territories that are yet to be definitively mapped. Their exploration is one of the more remarkable journeys in literature. -- Chris Power, The Guardian Rulfo, through his photographs and his books, seems to be saying, Look! See! This world is here before us, it lacerates us with the anguished and ill-fated weight of its tangible reality. Come look! -- BOMB Magazine My profound exploration of Juan Rulfo's work was what finally showed me the way to continue with my writing. -- Gabriel Garcia Marquez The only Mexican novelist who has given us an image--instead of just a description--of our landscape. -- Octavio Paz Rulfo's work is at its core about people who do their best to unburden themselves of the stories they never stop telling. -- Peter Orner, The Rumpus His is a text in which meaning is subsumed into an architecture of shadows and whispers, and into the ebb and flow of the vernacular. -- Suhayl Saadi, The Independent Far from the simple imitative realism of earlier Latin American novels, his essentialist work is on the level of myth and archetype. -- Rockwell Gray, The Chicago Tribune [Rulfo's] work is built on an intricate lattice of time and space, but it doesn't seem planned so much as grown, something natural, inevitable, efficient, and effortless. All its paradoxes are innate. -- Jim Lewis, Slate Octavio Paz has said that Juan Rulfo 'is the only Mexican novelist who has given us an image--instead of just a description--of our landscape.' By the same token we could say that Josephine Sacabo is the only photographer who has given us an image of that most elusive of landscapes conceived by Juan Rulfo--Cosala. -- Buenos Aires Herald .. .This is a book that is valuable in itself for its expression of the narrative talent of Juan Rulfo...Apart from the first images, which are truly cinematic and serve to introduce the protagonist...the reader soon forgets that he is reading a storyline written for the cinema. -- Evodia Escalante, Casa Del Tiempo The work of Juan Rulfo is not only the highest expression which the Mexican novel has attained until now: through Pedro Paramo we can find the thread that leads us to the new Latin American novel. -- Carlos Fuentes (on Pedro Paramo) His is a text in which meaning is subsumed into an architecture of shadows and whispers, and into the ebb and flow of the vernacular. -- Suhayl Saadi, The Independent (on Pedro Paramo) [Rulfo's] work is built on an intricate lattice of time and space, but it doesn't seem planned so much as grown, something natural, inevitable, efficient, and effortless. All its paradoxes are innate. -- Jim Lewis, Slate (on Pedro Paramo) A simplicity and profundity worthy of Greek tragedy ... Wuthering Heights located in Mexico and written by Kafka -- The Guardian (on Pedro Paramo) 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 (on The Plain in Flames) As a masterclass in the short story, The Burning Plain is a joy, but it is also a vivid historical document of a terrible and remote historical era. -- Andy Thatcher, The Short Review (on The Burning Plain) The feeling that one gets while reading is of a smoky, dark night filled with suspicious shadows hiding still darker secrets that pour out of the words and sentences of the stories. -- Bhupinder Singh, A Reader's Words (on The Burning Plain)
