The Burning Plain short stories by Rulfo Actions Cite verifiedCite While every effort has been made to follow citation style rules, there may be some discrepancies. Please refer to the appropriate style manual or other sources if you have any questions. Select Citation Style MLA APA Chicago Manual of Style Copy Citation Share Share Share to social media Facebook X URL https://www.britannica.com/topic/The-Burning-Plain Give Feedback Feedback Corrections? Updates? Omissions? Let us know if you have suggestions to improve this article (requires login). Feedback Type Select a type (Required) Factual Correction Spelling/Grammar Correction Link Correction Additional Information Other Your Feedback Submit Feedback Thank you for your feedback Our editors will review what you’ve submitted and determine whether to revise the article.

　　Print Cite verifiedCite While every effort has been made to follow citation style rules, there may be some discrepancies. Please refer to the appropriate style manual or other sources if you have any questions. Select Citation Style MLA APA Chicago Manual of Style Copy Citation Share Share Share to social media Facebook X URL https://www.britannica.com/topic/The-Burning-Plain Feedback Also known as: “El llano en llamas” Written by Daniel Mesa Gancedo Daniel Mesa Gancedo is a Lecturer in Latin American literature at the University of Zaragoza. His works include Similar Strangers; the Artificial Character and the Narrative Contrivance... Daniel Mesa Gancedo Fact-checked by The Editors of Encyclopaedia Britannica Encyclopaedia Britannica's editors oversee subject areas in which they have extensive knowledge, whether from years of experience gained by working on that content or via study for an advanced degree. They write new content and verify and edit content received from contributors. The Editors of Encyclopaedia Britannica Last Updated: Oct 14, 2024 • Article History Table of Contents Ask the Chatbot a Question Ask the Chatbot a Question The Burning Plain, a collection of short stories, including the title story, by the Mexican author Juan Rulfo (1917–1986), published in 1953.

　　The rainless, infertile Llano Grande, or Great Plain, in the west-central Mexican state of Jalisco frames these tales about the Mexican Revolution and the Cristero Rebellion. “So much land, so immense, and all for nothing,” sighs one character, a sentiment that is echoed despairingly throughout the collection. Populated by revolutionaries, bandits, and people who cannot escape it, the “burning plain” is a kind of hell on earth, both literal and metaphorical.

　　Rulfo’s stories, like his sole novel Pedro Páramo (1955), center on the endlessly brutalized lives of the rural poor and the one escape that awaits them: death. The stories in The Burning Plain are about what has happened and what cannot be changed, about revolution and betrayal, about the corruption that political power brings and the weary willingness of ordinary people to accommodate it, knowing that they cannot do otherwise. Rulfo explores the mechanisms of dominance and the faces of violence, often within the framework of family relationships being torn apart. Most of Rulfo’s characters, without purpose, roam across the landscape as if already dead. Some are, in fact, already ghosts, and one might count them the fortunate ones.

　　With this collection of short stories, the then unknown Rulfo was recognized as a master. The skillful handling of temporal structure and narrative voices, together with the dexterous balance between reality and fantasy, remote from magical realism, and the great originality of these stories, have all led to their author’s being considered one of the leading Latin American writers of his time. The famed Colombian novelist Gabriel García Márquez cited Rulfo and William Faulkner as his two chief influences in writing his masterwork, One Hundred Years of Solitude.

　　The Burning Plain has been widely translated, three times into English, with the most recent translation appearing in 2024.