La encuesta del Instituto Nobel de Suecia, de 2002, dirigida a un centenar de escritores y estudiosos de todo el mundo, ubicó a Pedro Páramo entre las cien obras que constituyen el núcleo del patrimonio universal de la literatura.

This collection contains 17 stories published by Rulfo beginning in 1945, when "Nos han dado la tierra" appeared in the literary reviews América and Pan. Rulfo described the progress of his work in letters to his fiancée Clara Aparicio. In 1951 he published a seventh story in América, "Diles que no me maten" (which Elias Canetti considered one of the finest stories ever written and Günter Grass admired as well). Thanks to a first grant from the Centro Mexicano de Escritores, Rulfo was able to finish eight more stories, which appeared with those already published under the general title of El Llano en llamas (The Burning Plain), also the name of one of the stories in the volume. The book was dedicated to Clara.