Juan Rulfo

Born in 1917 in Apulco, Jalisco, Juan Rulfo experienced the violence of the Cristero War and the Mexican Revolution, themes that permeate his work. He published only two major literary works: the short story collection El Llano en llamas (1953) and the novel Pedro Páramo (1955). The latter, a fragmented narrative of a ghost town and its tyrannical patriarch, broke with linear storytelling and influenced Gabriel García Márquez and other Latin American writers. Rulfo also worked as a photographer, capturing rural Mexico with the same stark intensity as his prose. He received the Premio Nacional de Letras in 1970 and the Premio Príncipe de Asturias in 1983. Despite his small output, his works are considered cornerstones of modern literature, celebrated for their lyrical exploration of memory, death, and the Mexican landscape.