among the lost (emiliano monge)

Perhaps it is easiest to talk about this novel in terms of references. The novel itself quotes Dante’s Inferno, including passages from the poem in italics. The conceit here is the passage of the damned. Dante chronicled a journey through the circles of hell. Monge’s tragic pilgrims are Central Americans, trying to find a passage from their cursed lands to the Eden of the USA. However, they find themselves caught in the brutal trap of Mexico, where they are sold into slavery, or murdered. This summons up the spirit of Cormac McCarthy, another quasi religious writer who saw in the lands south of the Rio Grande a medieval fresco of good versus evil. It is the evil whose story Monge tells. His story is presented through the eyes of the people smugglers, those who treat the pilgrims as cattle to be milched and ultimately butchered. The protagonists are a doomed couple, themselves victims turned oppressors, abused by a trafficking ring run by a cruel, immoral priest. The narrative seeks and perhaps succeeds in engendering sympathy for its unlikely anti-heroes, who find themselves, just like the cargo they traffic, unable to fend off their violent fate. Which perhaps summons up a final point of reference, which is Milton, the poet who placed Satan at the heart of Paradise Lost. 

I confess to having found this mannered novel somewhat discomforting, which is presumably the intention. There is something about the literariness of its tone and ambition which sits awkwardly with the untold stories contained within its pages. Victims remain nameless. Their presence little more than background noise in Monge’s dystopian tableau. They are the bizarre figures in Bosch’s vision of hell, struggling to escape the frame, forever trapped in their anonymity.