Family Drama; Historical Fiction; Magical Realism; Postmodernism
Pedro Páramo starts off as a clear-cut family drama: It's all about a man returning to his hometown to find his father. All of the action centers on this return, and also on the way that his father, Pedro Páramo, dealt with (or ignored) his many wives and children.
The story is fictional, but it is clearly rooted in a real place and time: Comala, Mexico, in the early 20th century. References to the Mexican Revolution and Cristero Wars gives the novel a historical frame and contrast with the really fantastical subject matter.
And speaking of fantastical subject matter, Pedro Páramo is considered one of the precursors to the Magical Realism boom in Spanish American literature, which puts magical elements (like ghosts) in an otherwise realistic setting (like a real town in Mexico).
Finally, all the back-and-forth with time and narrators puts this novel smack in the middle of the Postmodernism movement, which involves experimenting with style and fragmenting time and narration.