B. Traven was the pen name of a novelist, presumed to be German, whose real name, nationality, date and place of birth and details of biography are all subject to dispute. One certainty about Traven's life is that he lived for years in Mexico, where the majority of his fiction is also set—including The Treasure of the Sierra Madre (1927), the film adaptation of which won three Academy Awards in 1949.

The Treasure of the Sierra Madre is a 1927 adventure novel by German author B. Traven, whose identity remains unknown. In the book, two destitute American men in Mexico of the 1920s join an older American prospector in a search for gold. John Huston adapted the book as a 1948 film of the same name.