Among the Lost
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 First edition | |
| Author | Emiliano Monge |
|---|---|
| Original title | Las tierras arrasadas |
| Translator | Frank Wynne |
| Cover artist | Jo Thomson |
| Publisher | Scribe |
Publication date | 2015 |
| Publication place | Mexico City |
Published in English | 2018 |
| Pages | 345 |
| ISBN | 9781947534797 |
| Preceded by | Morirse de memoria |
Among the Lost (Spanish: Las tierras arrasadas) is a 2015 novel by Mexican author Emiliano Monge.
The novel is a love story between two human traffickers set in the jungles and wastelands of the Mexican–US border area. Eileen Battersby, writing for The Guardian, said "Monge balances the dour, apocalyptic brutality of Cormac McCarthy with lively, grim humour – evident in the exasperated exchanges – all of which makes the stark truths driving this flamboyant narrative a little easier to swallow".[1][2]
The novel was translated into English by Frank Wynne and published by Scribe.[1]
The two main characters, Estela and Epitafio ("about the weirdest variation of Romeo and Juliet yet to emerge anywhere"[1]), are former orphans who engage in human trafficking, gathering (and brutalizing) people who have fled their countries to sell them. Epitafio is forcibly married to another woman on orders of Father Nicho, the priest who runs the orphanage where they were dumped; Estela and he carry on a love affair mostly per cell phone as they ferry their loads of human cargo through an unnamed border area, with the orphanage as one of the central points. Father Nicho, who runs part of their operation, is planning to get rid of Epitafio and install a younger protégé, Sepelio, in his place. Other characters are a 14- and a 16-year-old boy, "sons of the jungle", who guide groups of refugees through the jungle and steal their possessions. One of the refugees, a "giant" former boxer whom Epitafio names Mausoleo, is saved from the group to become complicit in the operation, enforcing Epitafio's violent rule and killing two men early in the novel – he crushes a young refugee boy to death because he wouldn't obey Epitafio's command for him to keep quiet. His "inner struggle" is, according to one critic, the novel's "one true moral conflict".[3]
The novel's structure, according to Daniel Hahn, engages the readers and compromises them: "Estela and Epitafio are our main anchors, their experiences and relationship driving the story's developments, but these magnetic central characters are people-traffickers and kidnappers, capable of startling violence and dehumanising cruelty" – as readers become invested in them, they thus align themselves with the two.[4]
