BIOGRAPHY

B. Traven didn’t write his biography—he weaponized its absence. Every ‘fact’ about his life  was a carefully placed landmine in the field of literary history. For the reasons explained when you read more, he managed to create “the greatest literary mystery of the twentieth century”. To research Traven was to chase smoke: the more evidence you gathered—Swedish press cards, Mexican land deeds, anarchist pamphlets—the clearer it became that his greatest fiction was the invention of himself, until, once he felt safe, he revealed his identity to his closest friends in Mexico.