“Desconcertante, lista a inquietar a la crítica, está ya en los escaparates la primera novela de Juan Rulfo, “Pedro Páramo”, que transcurre en una serie de transposiciones oníricas, ahondando más allá de la muerte de sus personajes, que uno no sabe en qué momento son sueño, vida, fábula, verdad, pero a los que se les oye la voz al través de la ‘perspicacia despiadada y certera’ de tan sin duda extraordinario escritor.” Con estas palabras iniciaba Edmundo Valadés la primera reseña de Pedro Páramo, aparecida el 30 de marzo de 1955 y conservada por Rulfo entre sus papeles. Desde entonces, escritores como Jorge Luis Borges, Gabriel García Márquez, Gunter Grass, Susan Sontag y Mario Vargas Llosa, o el cineasta Werner Herzog, entre muchos más de cualquier lengua, coinciden en calificar esta novela como una de las obras maestras de la literatura de todos los tiempos.
The work of Juan Rulfo (1917–1986) is doubtless the Mexican literary creation which has received the greatest acclaim both in Mexico and abroad. The novel “Pedro Páramo” underwent a long gestation. Rulfo mentioned it for the first time in a letter in 1947, and was able to work on it in 1953–1954 thanks to a grant from the Centro Mexicano de Escritores. Excerpts were published in three maga¬zines in 1954, before the novel appeared in book form in 1955. This masterpiece has numbered Gabriel García Márquez, Jorge Luis Borges, and Susan Sontag among its admirers. “Pedro Páramo” evokes the very essence of Mexico through the most advanced literary forms and techniques of the twentieth century. Few works affect a Mexican reader as deeply as this novel, which also holds a place as a classic of world literature. It has been translated into almost fifty languages and new versions appear every year.
