Juan Rulfo wrote texts to read in lectures and radio programs, as well as letters, notes and prologues on literature. He gave interviews with this as the main theme and from this set comes the selection gathered in this volume, with 19 texts of not always easy access, or unpublished. Rulfo practiced over three decades the criticism of writers, which Ricardo Piglia valued above the academic and journalistic. In an interview dated in 1979 and included in this compilation,Alejandro Avilés commented, after hearing him talk about a work, that if Rulfo wanted to “he would become one of the best critics of our lyrics”.Rulfo published in 1965 a fragment of Hesíodo’s The Shield of Heracles in the magazine The Tale. The Greek poet, also author of the Theogony, begins this with the words of the muses: “we know how to tell lies similar to true things; but also, when we please, we know how to tell the truth.”

In 1979, as he said in two interviews here, Rulfo still thought that literature is a lie that tells the truth. With comments and notes that place Rulfo’s words in his time and literary medium, this book will allow readers of the author of El Llano en llamas, Pedro Páramo and El gallo de oro to reflect on such a unique case of the writer’s criticism postulated by Piglia.

This publication received funding from the Spanish Ministry of Sports and Culture.