...about the weirdest variation of Romeo and Juliet yet to emerge anywhere ... [an] atmospheric and shocking novel ... In an odyssey of relentless human cruelty, Emiliano Monge, one of the many linguistically adroit writers currently at work in what is an exciting era for Mexican fiction, spares no one. That he can succeed in generating any sympathy for his frenetic lovers is entirely due to the ferocious eloquence of his prose, which has been magnificently well served by translator Frank Wynne’s Miltonic register ... Stylistically reminiscent of an earlier Mexican master Juan Rulfo, and with nods to both Chilean maverick Roberto Bolaño, and fellow Mexicans Alvaro Enrique and Yuri Herrera, Monge’s realist, deadly topical fiction is a weighty metaphor for our world gone mad. His characters, however depraved, often reveal traces of empathy, self- doubt, even suppressed horror. Monge balances the dour, apocalyptic brutality of Cormac McCarthy with lively, grim humour...all of which makes the stark truths driving this flamboyant narrative a little easier to swallow.

The novel’s tone is unsparing and grim, but Monge’s prose also includes many moments of beauty. The characters travel through a landscape that is harsh and unwelcoming but majestically rendered. Even as Estela and Epitafio, accompanied by assorted other traffickers and corrupt officials, wreak havoc and destroy lives, their inner worlds are sharply, convincingly drawn. Their personal dramas are entertaining, and their rage-filled bumbling provides occasional much-needed dark humor, at the same time as their enterprise evokes horror and disgust ... Among the Lost is a timely novel of immigration that is as beautiful as it is horrific. It is a multilayered, emotionally complex artistic triumph.

Sometimes a novel can rip open [the] darkness ... Mexican novelist Emiliano Monge—the ripped-darkness phrase is his—has done exactly that with his newly translated novel, Among the Lost. But illumination is not without its own complications: To read Among the Lost is to be trapped in, to borrow another Mongian phrase, a 'cage of light'—a Goyaesque picture of the Central American exodus, and the horrors some migrants pass through along the transit routes in Mexico ... The reader is basically guided through a humid hellscape of backstabbing, plotting and counter-plotting, and wanton disregard for human life. If that sounds sensationalist or overwrought, the fictional elements are grounded by the much scarier snippets of actual testimony that Monge gathered from Central Americans as he traveled the migrant trails while researching the novel. In brutal detail, their testimonies describe a pervasive sense of panic.

...a fierce love story ... Monge’s narrative plants the reader in this dirty and tumultuous foreign land in a way that is artistically and cleverly shackling... [an] accomplished translation by Frank Wynne, who serves the barbaric fluency of the text very well ... It is a dog-eat-dog world, and bears striking resemblance to the anarchic Dante’s inferno, which seems to be a key influence on Monge’s narrative ... mimics the Joycean tendency to mash words together...Monge’s characters are often comically nicknamed, such as shewhoadoresepitafio and, my personal favourite, ionlyhearwhatiwant. Together these influences give a layered impression to Monge’s narrative, and contributes to an exciting period for Mexican fiction ... Overall, the triumph of Among the Lost is its depiction of human suffering ... Monge exposes these truths in stories that are not easy to shirk away from, with remarkable linguistic skill. An important read.

On a linguistic level, this is a total success. The language in Among the Lost is both striking and strikingly easy to read. Monge's collaging works flawlessly, and he is expert at shifting from high language to low. Before long, though, it becomes clear that he always shifts for the same reason: Beautiful prose is reserved for the disenfranchised ... Monge spends over half of Among the Lost in Estela and Epitafio's heads, a place the reader might prefer not to be. Often, listening to them talk to themselves is like listening to lovesick teenagers ... Luckily, Monge doesn't limit himself to Estela and Epitafio ... The result is a novel both made and broken by its risky intelligence. Monge's language collaging was a gamble that paid off. He channels the full spectrum of written expression, and the result hits the trifecta: beautiful, fast-paced, and completely his own. But it might have distracted him from his moral questions a bit too much; Among the Lost closes in the same moral space where it opened. Why should we care about Estela and Epitafio's love story? Like most of Monge's characters, the answer gets lost.

The relentless pace and vivid language, dynamically translated into English by Wynne, and including phrases from Dante and quotes from actual migrants, brings home the physical and emotional anxiety of those who have risked everything in the faint hope of a better life across the border ... In a remarkable literary feat, this tale of the dire events of one day illuminates the past, the present, and the future. While many questions remain unanswered at the end, this is a comprehensive drama of the human potential for violence and dreams in a fractured land.