The Bridge in the Jungle

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

New York Times Book Review

About B. Traven

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.
Details
  • Imprint: Penguin Classics
  • ISBN: 9780241822227
  • Length: 224 pages
  • Price: £10.99
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