Jun 9, 2026 · 50 min · 11 segments
Today we're talking about Juan Rulfo's novel Pedro Páramo. Originally published in 1955, we both read different English translations, which had an effect on how each of us understood the book. Content…
so for episode and book content warnings check our show notes Spoilers are sometimes unavoidable in our conversations.
We will do our best to warn you for the big ones.
The safest bet is always to read the book first.
This is quite a short book.
One thing to say, we are trying our best with the pronunciation of names.
Apologies for our accents.
And I will say right off the bat for content warnings, there is rape, murder and incest in this book.
None of it is gone into great detail that I remember.
And we're not going to go into great detail, but it will come up as a subject because it is just
like really unavoidable.
Yeah.
So Pedro Paramo by Juan Rufo was first published in 1955 by Fondo de Cultura Economica.
The copy that I have was translated by Douglas J. Weatherford in 2023 and published by Grove Press.
This book seems to be considered one of the first works of magical realism, and it became a huge inspiration for to other Latin American authors of magical realism like Gabriel Garcia Marquez.
He had already written several books before he read this one, I think in the early 60s.
The story is told in a non-linear way.
We see Pedro Paramo as a child and as a grown man.
There is so much that happens in this book that it's I would say it's impossible to summarize.
But in my interpretation, I would say Pedro Paramo sort of functions as like a god of this town.
He takes whatever women he wants.
so for episode and book content warnings check our show notes Spoilers are sometimes unavoidable in our conversations.
We will do our best to warn you for the big ones.
The safest bet is always to read the book first.
This is quite a short book.
One thing to say, we are trying our best with the pronunciation of names.
Apologies for our accents.
And I will say right off the bat for content warnings, there is rape, murder and incest in this book.
None of it is gone into great detail that I remember.
And we're not going to go into great detail, but it will come up as a subject because it is just
like really unavoidable.
Yeah.
So Pedro Paramo by Juan Rufo was first published in 1955 by Fondo de Cultura Economica.
The copy that I have was translated by Douglas J. Weatherford in 2023 and published by Grove Press.
This book seems to be considered one of the first works of magical realism, and it became a huge inspiration for to other Latin American authors of magical realism like Gabriel Garcia Marquez.
He had already written several books before he read this one, I think in the early 60s.
The story is told in a non-linear way.
We see Pedro Paramo as a child and as a grown man.
There is so much that happens in this book that it's I would say it's impossible to summarize.
But in my interpretation, I would say Pedro Paramo sort of functions as like a god of this town.
He takes whatever women he wants.
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