Like William Faulkner, Nobel Prize winner Colombian Gabriel García Márquez, or best-selling author Stephen King, Rolando Hinojosa created a geographical space of his own for his characters to people, free from the constraints that an already existing, real place could force upon his narrative universe. This space is a fictional county located in South Texas, in the Rio Grande Valley, Belken County, its capital city being Klail City. As the series of his novels (Klail City Death Trip Series) grows, Belken County progressively became a more complex geographical entity, acquiring an existence of its own. Belken County, in the mind of Hinojosa as well as in the minds of his readers, became more real with the release of every new novel; this is so much the case that, though in Estampas and his other works, no map of...
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Citation: Gomez-Galisteo, M. Carmen. "Rolando Hinojosa-Smith". The Literary Encyclopedia. First published 30 October 2007; last revised 15 August 2022. [https://www.litencyc.com/php/speople.php?rec=true&UID=2147, accessed 13 December 2025.]
