The Bridge in the Jungle

A moving portrayal of loss, consolation and solidarity in a remote Mexican community 
 
‘It seemed that even the jungle fell silent for a moment as if it wanted to help save a little child’ 
 
In the depths of the Mexican jungle, American traveller Gerard Gales is hunting for alligators, when he comes across a small village along the banks of the Huayalexco. Invited into the local community, Gales joins a huge party, held just across the river. But tragedy strikes when a young boy suddenly disappears into the pitch-dark night. As the villagers grapple with their loss, they come together in the face of life’s harshest realities, and something unspoken is born. A work of vivid description and radical empathy, Traven’s 1929 novel is a moving portrait of consolation and belonging in a remote indigenous community.

B. Traven is coming to be recognized as one of the narrative masters of the twentieth century

Traven's philosophical anarchism, his disengagement, his scorn for regimentation and material goods and his love of individual liberty and the primitive past could, conceivably, command as much reverence form the new generation as does Henry David Thoreau

He tells his story better than the best storytellers; delves deeper into characters than most so-called psychological writers. All the virility, terseness and tension that Hemingway worked so hard for...seem to be Traven's by birthright

Traven was above all a passionate defender of the victims of society, a man who hated injustice… His books were marvellous affirmations of his faith in the beaten man and his stories were permeated with a great and single-minded vision

Little is known for certain about the life of B. Traven; a prolific writer, he is best known for his beloved adventure novel The Treasure of the Sierra Madre, and the Jungle Novels, a series set during and after the outbreak of the Mexican Revolution, with proletarian, anarchist themes. During his lifetime, he was variously (and incorrectly) identified as the son of Kaiser Wilhelm I, or a North German brickmaker, but it is now believed that he was born Moritz Rathenau in Germany in 1882, the illegitimate son of Emil Rathenau, the founder of AEG and Helen Mareck, an Irish actress. He lived for some time as Ret Marut, a merchant seaman, actor, journalist and politician, and left Germany in 1923 after having been sentenced to death for his part in the Bavarian Revolution. He arrived in Mexico in 1924, where he dedicated himself to writing full time. Traven married Rosa Elena Luján in 1957 and died in Mexico City in 1969.

It seemed that even the jungle fell silent for a moment as if it wanted to help save a little child 
 
In the depths of the Mexican jungle, American traveller Gerard Gales is hunting for alligators, when he comes across a small village along the banks of the Huayalexco. Invited into the local community, Gales joins a huge party, held just across the river. But tragedy strikes when a young boy suddenly disappears into the pitch-dark night. As the villagers grapple with their loss, they come together in the face of life’s harshest realities, and something unspoken is born. A work of vivid description and radical empathy, Traven’s 1929 novel is a moving portrait of consolation and belonging in a remote indigenous community.

The Treasure of the Sierra Madre

The cult novel of three desperate prospectors embarking on a perilous quest for gold, and the inspiration for John Huston's classic Oscar-winning film 
 
‘Gold is a very devilish sort of a thing, believe me, boys’ 
 
Deep in the wild heart of Mexico’s Sierra Madre mountains lies treasure beyond reckoning, just waiting to be found by those who know where to look. Or so believe three Americans – Dobbs, Curtin and Howard – down on their luck and desperate for a way out. Teaming up on a perilous quest to hunt for gold, they soon find their fragile alliance tested, both by a band of local outlaws, and by their own greed. First published in 1927 and made into a classic film by John Huston, The Treasure of the Sierra Madre is a savagely ironic, anarchic cult novel about the price of ambition and the limits of endurance.

Traven tells his story better than the best storytellers; delves deeper into characters than most so-called psychological writers. All the virility, terseness and tension that Hemingway worked so hard for... seem to be Traven's by birthright

'Gold is a very devilish sort of a thing, believe me, boys' 
 
Deep in the wild heart of Mexico’s Sierra Madre mountains lies treasure beyond reckoning, just waiting to be found by those who know where to look. Or so believe three Americans – Dobbs, Curtin and Howard – down on their luck and desperate for a way out. Teaming up on a perilous quest to hunt for gold, they soon find their fragile alliance tested, both by a band of local outlaws, and by their own greed. First published in 1927 and made into a classic film by John Huston, The Treasure of the Sierra Madre is a savagely ironic, anarchic cult novel about the price of ambition and the limits of endurance.

B. Traven

The greatest of Traven's works, it is a good-humored but devastating attack on bureaucracy and the state

Whoever survived the Yorikke could never be frightened any more during his lifetime by anything 
 
Stateless and stranded after he loses his passport, sailor Gerald Gales flees arrest and persecution across Europe, until he finally finds work on the Yorikke, a decrepit ‘death ship’ bound for destruction. Condemned to stoke the furnaces, Gales must navigate a labyrinth of surreal rules and the brutal realities of life at sea if he is to make it out alive. First published in 1926 and thought to bear the traces of the mysterious author B. Traven’s own experience of migrating to Mexico, The Death Ship is a darkly absurd, raging tale about what it takes to survive when life is cheap.

B. Traven

Praise for The Death Ship

The greatest of Traven's works, it is a good-humored but devastating attack on bureaucracy and the state

The greatest of Traven's works, it is a good-humored but devastating attack on bureaucracy and the state

The greatest of Traven's works, it is a good-humored but devastating attack on bureaucracy and the state

The greatest of Traven's works, it is a good-humored but devastating attack on bureaucracy and the state

The greatest of Traven's works, it is a good-humored but devastating attack on bureaucracy and the state

The greatest of Traven's works, it is a good-humored but devastating attack on bureaucracy and the state

The greatest of Traven's works, it is a good-humored but devastating attack on bureaucracy and the state

The greatest of Traven's works, it is a good-humored but devastating attack on bureaucracy and the state

The greatest of Traven's works, it is a good-humored but devastating attack on bureaucracy and the state

Books by B. Traven

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