B. Traven

B. Traven (born March 5, 1890?, Chicago?, Ill., U.S.—died March 27, 1969, Mexico City, Mex.) was a novelist noted as a writer of adventure stories and as a chronicler of rural life in Mexico. A recluse, Traven refused personal data to publishers; hence many theories have arisen as to his parentage, his nationality, and his general identity. Most of his books were originally written in German and were first published in Germany.

In 1987 Karl S. Guthke published B. Traven: The Life Behind the Legends (originally in German), based in part on Traven’s personal papers and conversations with his widow, Rosa Elena Luján. Luján revealed that Traven had been the Bavarian revolutionary Ret Marut; Marut itself, however, was an assumed name. Guthke’s conclusion was that Traven himself did not know who his parents were. Other scholars have argued that Traven was Otto Feige (b. 1882, East Prussia); still others believed he was the illegitimate son of Kaiser Wilhelm II.

Several years after Traven settled in Mexico in the 1920s, his first book came out in Berlin. Das Totenschiff (1926; The Death Ship) tells of a sailor who, having lost his papers, boards a ship that is destined to be sunk for insurance money. Another work, Der Schatz der Sierra Madre (1927; The Treasure of the Sierra Madre), about a search for gold in Mexico, was made into a motion picture in 1948. Traven’s most important work is a series of novels that trace the exploitation, political awakening, and rebellion of a group of impoverished Indians in southern Mexico just before the start of the Mexican Revolution. Among the books in this series are Der Karren (1931; The Carreta), Regierung (1931; Government), Der Marsch ins Reich der Caoba (1933; March to the Monteria), Die Rebellion der Gehenkten (1936; The Rebellion of the Hanged), and Ein General kommt aus dem Dschungel (1940; General from the Jungle).

Traven’s works are harsh, filled with descriptions of danger, cruelty, and physical and emotional suffering, but his lean, direct prose has a hypnotic immediacy, and the narratives and themes are clear and compelling.