The sequence of events for the plot is broken up in the work in a nonlinear fashion and is at times difficult to discern and the same occurs with the characters as it is often impossible at first for the reader even to tell which characters are alive or dead. The novel is set in the fictional town of Comala and its surroundings, a reference to the real town of Comala in the Mexican state of Colima, close to Juan Rulfo's homeland. The two major competing narrative voices present alternative visions of Comala, one living and one populated with the spirits of the dead. His narration is interspersed with fragments of third-person dialogue from the life of Pedro Páramo, who lived in a time when Comala was a robust, living town, instead of the ghost town Juan now sees. The story begins with the first-person account of Juan Preciado, who promises his mother at her deathbed that he will return to Comala to meet his father, Pedro Páramo. Moreover, García Márquez claimed that he "could recite the whole book, forwards and backwards." Jorge Luis Borges considered Pedro Páramo to be one of the greatest texts written in any language. Gabriel García Márquez has said that he felt blocked as a novelist after writing his first four books and that it was only his life-changing discovery of Pedro Páramo in 1961 that opened his way to the composition of his masterpiece, One Hundred Years of Solitude. Pedro Páramo has been translated into more than 30 different languages and the English version has sold more than a million copies in the United States. Páramo was a key influence on Latin American writers such as Gabriel García Márquez. Initially, the novel was met with cold critical reception and sold only two thousand copies during the first four years later, however, the book became highly acclaimed. During the course of the novel, these ghostly inhabitants reveal details about life and afterlife in Comala, including that of Preciado's reckless father: Pedro Páramo, and his centrality for the town. That is, populated by spectral characters. The novel tells the story of Juan Preciado, a man who promises his mother on her deathbed to meet Preciado's father for the first time in the town of Comala, only to come across a literal ghost town. Pedro Páramo is a novel written by Mexican writer Juan Rulfo.
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