Although Juan Rulfo's literary production was meager, it has had an impact on Latin-American narrative fiction that surpasses that of many prolific novelists or short-story writers. His popularity, not only in Latin America but also in Europe, may be explained by the fact that his collection of short stories El llano en llamas (1953; translated as The Burning Plain and Other Stories, 1967) and his novel Pedro Páramo (1955; translated, 1959) capture in a powerful way the essence of rural Mexico and its people. There may be another reason for this popularity, and that is the introduction by Rulfo of a new type of fiction into Latin-American letters, a fiction that was soon to explode into the so-called Boom, with the novels of Carlos Fuentes, Gabriel García Márquez, Julio Cortázar, and Mario Vargas Llosa, among others.

Rulfo's two major works of fiction, his film...