Juan José Arreola was born on September 12, 1918, in Ciudad Guzman, in Jalisco, Mexico. The fourth of fourteen children in an intensely religious family, he was forced to leave school at twelve to apprentice with a bookbinder. Although he worked at a series of jobs as a young man, he was drawn to writing and acting from an early age, and in 1939 he enrolled in the Instituto de Bellas Artes in Mexico City to study acting. His acting career took him briefly to France, but the bulk of his professional work consists of the written word.

Arreola began writing when he moved to Mexico City, where he collaborated with other young Mexican writers, including Juan Rulfo, on a literary journal entitled Pan. His first story to gain recognition was Hizo el bien Mientras Vivio, which was published in 1943. Over the course of the next two decades...