Celebrating 216 Years of Mexican Independence: Six Famous Short Novel Writers

Hello. Welcome back to my Bibliophilia Book Reviews. Today, I am going recommend six Mexican short novel writers. I have read all the books I recommend here and hope that they interest you enough to pick them up too. Let’s begin:

1. Juan Rulfo

Despite having published only one collection of short stories, El llano en llamas (1953), and one novella, Pedro Páramo (1955), Juan Rulfo is considered today one of the great masters of 20th-century Spanish-American literature. Pedro Páramo is a pioneering work of magical realism that influenced other authors of the Latin American literary boom such as Gabriel García Márquez, with One Hundred Years of Solitude, a key work of magical realism, Julio Cortázar and his world famous novel Hopscotch, which broke with traditional novel-reading conventions, Mario Vargas Llosa, author of The Notebooks of Don Rigoberto—read my review here, and Carlos Fuentes, writer of works such as The Death of Artemio Cruz and Aura). Born in the small town of Apulco, Sayula, in Jalisco, Juan Rulfo grew up in a rural village where superstition and the cult of the dead were part of everyday life; there, he also endured the harsh consequences of the Mexican Revolution and the Cristero War, both of which shaped the desolate universe he would later construct in his masterpiece. He died in Mexico City in 1986.

Vine a Comala porque me dijeron que acá vivía mi padre, un tal Pedro Páramo.

2. Mariano Azuela

Mariano Azuela was both a doctor and a writer. He was born January 1^st, 1853, in Lagos de Moreno, Jalisco. Today, he is known as the pioneer and most important writer of novels about the Mexican Revolution. He wrote at least 20 novels, but his most famous one is The Underdogs published in 1915. He once said, “In my novels, I portray virtues and vices without sugarcoating or glorification, and with no other intention than to present, as faithfully as possible, an accurate image of our people and of who we are.” He passed away in Mexico City on March 1^st, 1952.

3. José Agustín

Born in 1944, José Agustín was one of the most important writers of the ‘Literatura de la Onda’ (Wave Literature), a literary movement of the 1960s that broke with tradition by incorporating colloquial language commonly heard in the speech of young adults in Mexico City, including slang, idioms, and innuendos. It also addressed uncensored issues about sex, drugs, and nightlife in the city, as well as the unabashed rejection of political and domestic (family) authority. His most important work is La Tumba. Other important authors of the ‘Literatura de la Onda’ include Gustavo Sainz with Gazapo, Parménides García Saldaña with Pasto verde and Larga sinfonia en D y había una vez by Margarita Dalton. José Agustín died January 16^th, 2024.

4. José Emilio Pacheco

He is one of the most important Mexican writers of the 20^th Century. His most famous novel, Battles in the Desert (Las batallas en el desierto) is one of my favorite books ever. Read my review here. This book is about the world of children and young adults confronting the cruelty, disillusionment, and the transformation of the adult world. But other topics in his literary work include the inexorable passage of time and the fleeting nature of life, memory, and how history is doomed to repeat itself. He was married to another famous Mexican author, Cristina Pacheco. He died in 2014, at the age of 74.  

5. Salvador Elizondo

Elizondo, a contemporary and friend of Jorge Luis Borges, is mostly known today for his novel Farabeuf: The Chronicle of an Instant, “a Joycean project in which the narrator returns again and again to a single moment in a whirling, phenomenological autopsy, an experiment meant to arrive not so much at an answer but in a reorientation of perception and of what Mexican literature might be capable” (LALT; Salvador Elizondo). “The Chronicle of an Instant is a phrase which neatly encapsulates the writer’s intention, with the reader enticed into, and then trapped inside, one looping, unceasing moment, forever trying to work out exactly what is happening” (Tony’s Reading List). This is one of the hardest Mexican short novels I’ve ever read. “The first two chapters, in particular, seem designed to thwart the casual reader, looping around and back on themselves before setting off on a slightly different journey.  The sense of confusion is exacerbated by the use of differing points of view, jumping from first person to second to third with little regard for the reader’s comfort (or sanity).  As a result, we’re rarely sure who is speaking to whom, or even how many people there actually are in the house – that is, if any of it is real, anyway” (Tony’s Reading List)”. Elizondo’s technique is considered rather unrealistic and proto-fictional, as opposed to magical realism. Some critics have highlighted his literary works as postmodern literature since it challenges fiction through autofiction, metafiction, metalepsis, and by intertwining possible fictional worlds (Salvador Elizondo, Iberoamericana Vervuert, Frankfurt).

6. Yuri Herrera

Yuri Herrera’s most important works are Signs Preceding the End of the World and The Transmigration of Bodies. The topics this author explores in his books are power, violence, migration and organized crime.

That is everything for today. Thank you for stopping by. Next time, I’ll be talking about famous Mexican novelists.

Note: The featured image in this post is La Patria by Jorge González Camarena.