Pedro Paramo. Plain on Fire

The stories included in the collection "Plain on Fire" were written from 1945 to 1955, and despite being dedicated to the problems of the Mexican hinterland, many of them remain relevant today. This concerns not only banditry or the abuse of power at the local level ("Slope of Comadres", "Plain on Fire"), but also such Mexican phenomena as "coyotaje" - the illegal trafficking of emigrants to the USA, which has become one of the themes of the story "To the North". The heroes of the stories painfully seek a way out of the vicious circle of poverty and violence. In some cases, deliberate murder for a number of characters is random, commonplace. Each story by Rulfo, alongside its social interpretation, also has another, universal aspect - the relationship between father and son, collective memory, blood revenge, sin, salvation, and much more. Rulfo explores the nature of man on a scale comparable to the works of Cervantes, Shakespeare, or Dostoevsky.