Mariano Azuela's masterful novel about the Mexican revolution, freshly translated by Frederick H. Fornoff, is the first of a series of definitive texts from Latin America and the Caribbean translated into English and accompanied by critical and bibliographical essays. Originally published in instalments in an El Paso newspaper in 1915, Los de Abajo (The Underdogs) has steadily gained in literary stature in Mexico and in Latin America. By the time of Azuela's death in 1952, it had achieved widespread recognition as a classic among the scores of Mexican novels about the revolution.