On Deck

Hailed as a masterpiece since its publication in 1962, The Death of Artemio Cruz is Carlos Fuentes' haunting voyage into the soul of modern Mexico. Its acknowledged place in Latin American fiction and its appeal to a fresh generation of readers have warranted this new translation by Alfred Mac Adam, translator (with the author) of Fuentes' Christopher Unborn. As in all his fiction, but perhaps most powerfully in this book, Fuentes is a passionate guide to the ironies of Mexican history, the burden of its past, and the anguish of its present.

A major figure in the history of post-Revolutionary literature in Mexico, Juan Rulfo received international acclaim for his brilliant short novel Pedro Páramo (1955) and his collection of short stories El llano en llamas (1953), translated as a collection here in English for the first time. In the transition of Mexican fiction from direct statements of nationalism and social protest to a concentration on cosmopolitanism, the works of Rulfo hold a unique position. These stories of a rural people caught in the play of natural forces are not simply an interior examination of the phenomena of their world; they are written for the larger purpose of showing the actions of humans in broad terms of reality.