Pedro Páramo. Plain in Flames

Juan Rulfo Pedro Páramo. Plain in Flames "If I had written Pedro Páramo, I would not have worried about anything else and would not have published anything more in my life" – Gabriel Garcia Marquez The stories included in the... collection "Plain in Flames" were written from 1945 to 1955, and although they are dedicated to the problems of the Mexican hinterland, many of which are still relevant today.
Moreover, the focus is not only on banditry or abuse of local power ("The Comadres Hill," "Plain in Flames"), but also on such Mexican phenomena as "coyoteing" – the illegal transport of emigrants to the USA, which became one of the themes of the story "To the North." The characters in the stories painfully seek a way out of the vicious circle of poverty and violence. In some cases, deliberate murder is random and commonplace for a number of characters. Rulfo explores the nature of man on a scale comparable to the works of Cervantes, Shakespeare, or Dostoevsky.
"Pedro Páramo" is the opus magnum of the Mexican writer. Juan Preciado, at the behest of his deceased mother, goes in search of his father Pedro Páramo in the village of Comala. He does not immediately realize where he has ended up – Comala is inhabited only by the ghosts of its former residents, although the realm of the "dead" retains all the realities of ordinary earthly life.
Juan Preciado's storyline intertwines with that of Pedro Páramo, the man to whom the stories of all the residents of Comala are connected. He has long been dead, but thanks to the weaving of memories from his real life into the narrative, he alone seems alive. However, everything that Páramo touches turns to dust... The new translation, corresponding to the norms of modern Russian language and style, also takes into account the extensive research conducted over the last half-century in the writer's works. The process of creating the novel has intrigued critics and readers for decades: could a writer, previously known only for a handful of stories, create such a powerful modernist work? And such a work in which innovative composition, universal themes, and original poetics would merge into one?
A multifaceted introductory article by Petr Kogan will familiarize the reader with the personality of the writer, reveal the features of his creativity, and immerse them in the Mexican color and the history of the Great Plain in southern Jalisco, where Juan Rulfo was born and spent his childhood.