A profound farewell gesture of love and sorrow, such heartbreaking sorrow.

The Irish Times
by Kurt Kaindl

Amanda Hopkinson

is a professor of literary translation at City, University of London and has translated over forty books from Spanish, French, and Portuguese.

cover image of the book The Hole

The Hole

by José Revueltas

Translated by Sophie Hughes and Amanda Hopkinson

With a contribution by Álvaro Enrigue

Set in a Mexican prison in the late 1960s, The Hole follows three inmates as they attempt to sneak in drugs under the noses of their ape-like guards. Desperate to secure their next fix, they hatch a plan that involves convincing one of their mothers to bring the drugs into the prison. But everything about their plot is doomed from the beginning, doomed to end in violence …

Unfolding in a single paragraph, The Hole is a verbal torrent, a prison inside a prison, and an ominous parable about deformed and wretched institutions creating even more deformed and wretched individuals.

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A profound farewell gesture of love and sorrow, such heartbreaking sorrow.

The Irish Times
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