Welcome to Litsy!

“- What is it? - she said.
- What is what? - I asked.
- That, that noise.
- It is silence... “

If you don‘t mind immersing yourself in a world where the landscapes are as desolate and barren as the characters‘ distorted sense of reality, where the wind has claws and bites till you feel it boiling inside you, please check out this collection of short stories and this author. Set in rural Mexico, they expose a unique type of existential loneliness.

This collection is stylistically similar to #PedroParamo. The stories are all set in rural Mexico, an area isolated, hot, and hostile, during a time of unrest and violence (c. 1920s), and the characters are poor. The writing is beautiful and I concur this is a worthy member of the #1001 list. And yet, I had difficulty reading the stories. I‘ve long recognized I don‘t get on with short stories. They frequently feel...See Below

My project for this year is to read my TBR stack by year of publication starting with 1950. So far I‘ve read (or reread) the following: The Moon and Bonfires, The Family Moskat, The Wall, The Abbe C, The Grass Is Singing, and Our Spoons Came From Woolworths. Of these, my favorite by far was The Family Moskat. I have one more 1950 book to read before moving on to 1951–The Burning Plain.

This 1001 list book by Mexican author Juan Rulfo evokes a hot, desolate landscape where the poor struggle. Soldiers, rebels, laborers--all appear, but the main character is the landscape.