Juan Rulfo

Juan Nepomuceno Carlos Pérez Rulfo Vizcaíno, known as Juan Rulfo (Sayula, Mexico, 16 May 1917 – Mexico City, 7 January 1986) was a Mexican author and scriptwriter, maximum exponent of magical realism and a capital author of literature in Spanish.

In the 1950s he started to publish his writings in different magazines in the country and to collaborate on the creation of scripts for television. The only works published during his lifetime are El llano en llamas (1953), a compilation of short stories; Pedro Páramo (1955), a key magical realism work; and El gallo de oro (1980), a collection of scripts for television.

Another facet of his artistic legacy is his collection of photographs, which became more widely known in 1980, thanks to an exhibition staged at the Palacio de Bellas Artes in Mexico City.

Rulfo received the Prince of Asturias Prize for Letters in the year 1983 in recognition of his “great aesthetic quality, depth of invention, aptness and expressive novelty, as well as his decisive influence on subsequent narrative in his country and the outstanding place he occupies in the world of Spanish literature”, and, posthumously, the Manuel Gamio Prize, for indigenous merit, corresponding to the year 1985.