Status
Disponible
Call number
Genres
Publication
University of Texas Press
Description
El llano en llamas (translated into English as "The Burning Plain and Other Stories", "The Plain in Flames", and "El Llano in flames") is a collection of short stories written in Spanish by Mexican author Juan Rulfo and first published in 1953
User reviews
LibraryThing member RebecaDarklight
“El Llano en Llamas” (“The burning plain”) is a collection of tales about life, poverty, treason and death. Rulfo captured with precision the harsh and raw rural life of the people of his hometown state, Jalisco (center-Pacific of México), during the Mexican Revolution and the Cristero
I have read some excerpts in English and the translations are good but, as it always happens, the richness of the language gets lost in translation. I would recommend that, if your second language is Spanish, first read the book in your native language and then give it another go in the original version. The book is not long and this would be rather easy to do in a short period of time.
Oh, and, just in case. This book doesn’t belong to magical realism. It’s realism in its purest form (for the best example of magical realism, read Rulfo’s “Pedro Páramo”, the book that inspired Gabriel García Márquez to write “One Hundred Years of Solitude”).
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Rebellion (beginning of the 20th century). The language is apparently simple, as it depicts the way of talking of the subjects, but the writing is deep and rich. I have read some excerpts in English and the translations are good but, as it always happens, the richness of the language gets lost in translation. I would recommend that, if your second language is Spanish, first read the book in your native language and then give it another go in the original version. The book is not long and this would be rather easy to do in a short period of time.
Oh, and, just in case. This book doesn’t belong to magical realism. It’s realism in its purest form (for the best example of magical realism, read Rulfo’s “Pedro Páramo”, the book that inspired Gabriel García Márquez to write “One Hundred Years of Solitude”).
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LibraryThing member hippietrail
Considering how simple Rulfo's sentences are, I'm having a hell of a time reading this. I think it's mostly the vocabulary specific to northern Mexico, and possibly that combined with situations specific to the same reason with which I can't readily identify.
LibraryThing member bluepigeon
The stories in El Llano en Llamas are perhaps described best as "la literatura de la tierra." Some are haunting, some bizarre, and some a bit too long. Rulfo incites a desperate, sparse mood, where one can imagine the pesky fine desert particles invading every orifice, the bloody, peeling skin on
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the feet of poor people in pilgrimage to remote lands for salvation, god forsaken people in god forsaken places named only to remain remote... And there is always a murder, if not a death of some sort. Diles que no me maten, Talpa, No oyes ladrar los perros, and Anacleto Morones are my favorites in this collection. Show Less
LibraryThing member ursula
I feel like I say this every time I review a book of short stories, but I'll say it again anyway: I'm not much of a short story fan. I often feel like I'm left hanging at the end of a story, and not in a good, "I'm going to think about what I think might have happened next" sort of way, but in a
The stories are about people with hard lives, living in harsh landscapes. Violence and deprivation are common to the stories, but they don't read like a litany of woes. Few of the characters have given up, even when faced with injustice or seemingly insurmountable odds. But the characters themselves are often not angelic or blameless in their circumstances either - the criminal element is explored as well. The stories seemed steeped in masculinity to me, and the collection reminded me of a south of the border Cormac McCarthy. (Disclaimer: I do not like Cormac McCarthy, so I guess I'm saying for myself, I found Rulfo to be a more successful version of McCarthy.)
I think in addition to the first story, "Macario," my favorite was "Paso del Norte," about a man who attempts to cross the border into the US.
Recommended for: Cormac McCarthy fans, viewers of Breaking Bad, people interested in snapshots of mid-century Mexico.
Quote: "When she calls me to eat, it's to give me my part of the food. She's not like other people who invite me to eat with them and then when I get close throw rocks at me until I run away without eating anything." (Macario)
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"well, that seemed pointless" sort of way. This collection drew me in with the first story, which takes place inside the mind of a child who is waiting next to a drain to kill frogs.The stories are about people with hard lives, living in harsh landscapes. Violence and deprivation are common to the stories, but they don't read like a litany of woes. Few of the characters have given up, even when faced with injustice or seemingly insurmountable odds. But the characters themselves are often not angelic or blameless in their circumstances either - the criminal element is explored as well. The stories seemed steeped in masculinity to me, and the collection reminded me of a south of the border Cormac McCarthy. (Disclaimer: I do not like Cormac McCarthy, so I guess I'm saying for myself, I found Rulfo to be a more successful version of McCarthy.)
I think in addition to the first story, "Macario," my favorite was "Paso del Norte," about a man who attempts to cross the border into the US.
Recommended for: Cormac McCarthy fans, viewers of Breaking Bad, people interested in snapshots of mid-century Mexico.
Quote: "When she calls me to eat, it's to give me my part of the food. She's not like other people who invite me to eat with them and then when I get close throw rocks at me until I run away without eating anything." (Macario)
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LibraryThing member Dreesie
The short stories in this collection--and some of them are very short, telling of just one incident--do an amazing job of evoking the landscape and climate of the region of Mexico described. It sounds like desert (more specifically, it sounds like the Colorado Desert in CA/AZ, which extends into
The main characters are poor, struggling, and doing what they need to do to get by. The stories do not specify if they are largely of Indian descent, though the intro says so. Perhaps Mexicans reading the original Spanish can tell, whether by names used, jobs held, or other clues that I miss as an American reading in English.
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Mexico). One of the stories, though, implies that the area is south of Mexico City. The landscape/climate is a character unto itself, and is so similar between the stories.The main characters are poor, struggling, and doing what they need to do to get by. The stories do not specify if they are largely of Indian descent, though the intro says so. Perhaps Mexicans reading the original Spanish can tell, whether by names used, jobs held, or other clues that I miss as an American reading in English.
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LibraryThing member arubabookwoman
This collection of short stories is similar stylistically to Juan Rulfo's novel Pedro Paramo which I read a few years ago and loved so much that when I finished it I immediately went back to page 1 and read it again. The stories are all set in rural Mexico, in an isolated area that is hot and dry
I recognize the beauty of Rulfo's writing and concur that this is worthy of inclusion in the 1001 Books To Read Before You Die. And yet, I had difficulty reading these stories. I've long recognized that I don't get along with short stories. They often feel incomplete to me, and I frequently feel puzzled by them. For many of these stories, it feels to me as if Rulfo had gone out of the way to make the stories puzzling. The first one, "Macaria", (one of the ones I had the least trouble with) is narrated by a man of whom the villagers "say in the street that I am crazy." He is killing frogs for the elderly woman (relationship unknown) who cares for him and who hates frogs. People throw stones at him, and he is always hungry, and eats cockroaches in the dark. In "We're Very Poor" a series of catastrophes big and small ends with a flood which carries away the narrator's sister's cow, which was purchased as her dowry to ensure that she didn't end up "going bad" like the other sisters. Perhaps the most famous and accessible story is "Tell Them Not To Kill Me." In this one, the narrator, who killed a man 40 years ago and has just been captured by the son of the man he killed, urges his son to beg his captor for mercy.
Pedro Paramo has the same type of detail of the brutality of life combined with a certain mysticism that these short stories have. But somehow to me the lack of a complete narrative arc in the short stories left me puzzled. However, I do think that this is more my lack of comprehension than a fault of the stories.
3 stars
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and hostile, a place of which one of the characters says, "You talk here and the words get hot in your mouth." The characters are all poor(with exceptions in a few of the stories for the landowners and rich people against whom these people struggle) and can barely manage to eke out a living. Most of the stories are set in the first 25 or so years of the 20th century in a time of violence and political unrest, which also feature prominently in these stories. I recognize the beauty of Rulfo's writing and concur that this is worthy of inclusion in the 1001 Books To Read Before You Die. And yet, I had difficulty reading these stories. I've long recognized that I don't get along with short stories. They often feel incomplete to me, and I frequently feel puzzled by them. For many of these stories, it feels to me as if Rulfo had gone out of the way to make the stories puzzling. The first one, "Macaria", (one of the ones I had the least trouble with) is narrated by a man of whom the villagers "say in the street that I am crazy." He is killing frogs for the elderly woman (relationship unknown) who cares for him and who hates frogs. People throw stones at him, and he is always hungry, and eats cockroaches in the dark. In "We're Very Poor" a series of catastrophes big and small ends with a flood which carries away the narrator's sister's cow, which was purchased as her dowry to ensure that she didn't end up "going bad" like the other sisters. Perhaps the most famous and accessible story is "Tell Them Not To Kill Me." In this one, the narrator, who killed a man 40 years ago and has just been captured by the son of the man he killed, urges his son to beg his captor for mercy.
Pedro Paramo has the same type of detail of the brutality of life combined with a certain mysticism that these short stories have. But somehow to me the lack of a complete narrative arc in the short stories left me puzzled. However, I do think that this is more my lack of comprehension than a fault of the stories.
3 stars
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Original publication date
1953