In Germany, Traven, under the name Ret Marut, wrote mainly short stories as a sideline to five activities: merchant seaman, acting, directing, producing a political magazine and practicing revolutionary politics. In Mexico, he emerged as a fully fledged novelist under the name of B. Traven. He wrote his first five novels from the perspective of a member of the European underclass, which  were partly autobiographical. His first book is about a sailor without documents who survives a shipwreck (Death Ship). In the next two books the hero is a foreign worker without documents in post WWI Mexico (Cottonpickers and Treasure of the Sierra Madre).  His next two books are as a foreign observer of indigenous Mexicans (Bridge in the Jungle) and, finally, the clash of  cultures between a traditional Indian community leader and a foreign capitalist (White Rose).

The following six books are a carefully planned cycle. Continuing as a champion of the oppressed, but this time of Mexico, not Europe, he describes the revolt of the Indians exploited in the logging camps (Monterías) in Chiapas, who finally rebel and revenge themselves on their masters. An epic masterpiece. In his last book, Aslan Norval, published 20 years after his previous one, he returns to autobiography describing a young female entrepreneur married to an older man who attempts to put together a major infrastructure project in the USA, with all the  personal, economic, social and political problems that she is forced to confront.