In this grim inferno, a fierce love has blossomed — one that was born in pain and cruelty, and one that will live or die on this day. Estela and Epitafio too were trafficked, they grew together in the brutal orphanage, fell in love, but were ripped apart. They have played an ugly role in the very system that abused them, and done the bidding of the brutal old priest for too long. They have traded in migrants, put children to work as slaves, hacked off limbs and lives without a thought, though they have never forgotten the memory of their own shackles.
Like the immigrants whose hopes they extinguish, they long to be free; free to be together and alone. Here in an unnamed land that could be a Mexico reimagined by Breughel and Dante, on the border between purgatory and inferno, where Paradise is the mouth of hell and cruelty the only currency, lives are spent, bartered and indentured for it. Must all be bankrupt among the lost?
Emiliano Monge is a critically acclaimed, award-winning Mexican author. He was selected as one of the most significant Latin American writers by the Guadalajara International Book Fair in 2009, and in 2015 was chosen by Conaculta, the Hay Festival, and the British Council as one of twenty essential Mexican writers. In 2018, he was included on a list of the most important Latin American writers under thirty-nine by the Hay Festival. He is a regular columnist for the newspaper El País and has written for many other magazines and publications. He is also a member of the Sistema Nacional de Creadores Artísticos (National Scheme of Artistic Creators) in Mexico.
Frank Wynne is an Irish literary translator, writer, and editor. He has translated numerous French and Hispanic authors including Michel Houellebecq, Patrick Modiano, Javier Cercas, and Virginie Despentes. Over a career spanning more than twenty years, his work has earned him the IMPAC Dublin Literary Award, and the Independent Foreign Fiction Prize, and he was twice awarded both the Scott Moncrieff Prize and the Premio Valle Inclán. Most recently, his translation of Animalia by Jean-Baptiste del Amo won the 2020 Republic of Consciousness Prize. He has edited two major anthologies, Found in Translation: 100 of the finest short stories ever translated (2018) and QUEER: LGBT writing from ancient times to yesterday (2021).