The Burning Plain

Juan Rulfo · 1917–1986 · Mexico

Originally El llano en llamas (Spanish)

Why it matters

Seventeen spare, brutal stories of the Mexican countryside: drought, revenge, and the poverty that outlasts revolutions. Rulfo's stories laid the ground for Pedro Páramo and for a whole continent's fiction.

At a glance

Spare, elliptical prose leaves violence and motive largely unstated between the lines.