Beruflich Dokumente
Kultur Dokumente
Traven
Description:
In the second of his six Jungle Novels, Traven brings his remarkable narrative talents to bear on
the coming of age of a young Indian ox-cart driver and the oppressive world in which he must
make his way. B. Traven is coming to be recognized as one of the narrative masters of the
twentieth century. --New York Times
About Author:
B. Traven (February, 1882? March 26, 1969?) was the pen name of a German novelist, whose
real name, nationality, date and place of birth and details of biography are all subject to dispute. A
rare certainty is that B. Traven lived much of his life in Mexico, where the majority of his fiction is
also setincluding his best-known work, The Treasure of the Sierra Madre (1927), which was
adapted as the Academy Award nominated film of the same name in 1948.
Virtually every detail of Traven's life has been disputed and hotly debated. There were many
hypotheses on the true identity of B. Traven, some of them wildly fantastic. Most agree, that
Traven was Ret Marut, a German stage actor and anarchist, who supposedly left Europe for
Mexico around 1924. There are also reasons to believe that Marut/Traven's real name was Otto
Feige and that he was born in Schwiebus in Brandenburg, modern day wiebodzin in Poland. B.
Traven in Mexico is also connected with Berick Traven Torsvan and Hal Croves, both of whom
appeared and acted in different periods of the writer's life. Both, however, denied being Traven
and claimed that they were his literary agents only, representing him in contacts with his
publishers.
B. Traven is the author of twelve novels, one book of reportage and several short stories, in which
the sensational and adventure subjects combine with a critical attitude towards capitalism,
betraying the socialist and even anarchist sympathies of the writer. B. Traven's best known works
include the novels The Death Ship from 1926 and The Treasure of the Sierra Madre from 1927, in
1948 filmed by John Huston, and the so-called Jungle Novels, also known as the Caoba cyclus
(from the Spanish word caoba, meaning mahogany), a group of six novels (including The Carreta,
Government), published in the years 1930-1939, set among Mexican Indians just before and
during the Mexican Revolution in the early 20th century. B. Traven's novels and short stories
became very popular as early as the interwar period and retained this popularity after the war; they
were also translated into many languages. Most of B. Traven's books were published in German
first and their English editions appeared later; nevertheless the author always claimed that the
English versions were the original ones and that the German versions were only their translations.
This claim is not taken seriously.
Other Editions:
- Carreta (Paperback)
- Der Karren (Caoba-Zyklus #1)
- La Carreta (Paperback)
Books By Author:
- Macario
- The Death Ship
- Government
- 68
- The Heat's On (Harlem Cycle, #6)
- Red Star