“This dark, sprawling novel is the English language debut of Emiliano Monge, a Mexican writer who is often compared to the US literary superstar Cormac McCarthy. Written in a tone that evokes McCarthy’s unrelenting classic Blood Meridian, the novel tells the story of Germán Alcántara Carnero, a dangerous campesino fighting to survive in rural 20th century Mexico, and also a metaphor for the spiraling violence of contemporary Mexican society.” —Culture Trip Set on a desolate, unnamed mesa, Emiliano Monge’s The Arid Sky distills the essence of a Latin America ruthlessly hollowed out by uncontainable violence. This is an unsparing yet magnificent land, whose only constants are loneliness, hatred, loyalty, and the struggle to return some small measure of meaning to life. Thundering and inventive, The Arid Sky narrates the signature moments in the life of Germán Alcantara Carnero: a man who is both exaltedly, viscerally real and is an ageless, nameless being capable of embodying entire eras, cultures, and conflicts. Monge’s roadmap—an escape across borders, the disappearance of a young girl, the confrontation between a father and his son, the birth of a sick child, and murder—takes readers on a journey to the core of humankind that posits a challenge of the kind only great literature can pose.

The Arid Sky

Literature & Fiction

Monge, Emiliano

United States

Restless Books

In the desolate wastelands between the sierra and the jungle, under an all-seeing, unforgiving sun, a single day unfolds as relentlessly as those that have gone before. People are trafficked and brutalised, illegal migrants are cheated of their money, their dreams, their very names, even as countless others scrabble to cross the border, trying to reach a land they call El Paraíso. 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?

Among The Lost

Literary

Scribe US

A devastating and surreal novel about the defining issue of the 21st century: illegal immigration. In the desolate wastelands between the sierra and the jungle, under an all-seeing, unforgiving sun, a single day unfolds as relentlessly as those that have gone before. People are trafficked and brutalized, illegal migrants are cheated of their money, their dreams, their very names, even as countless others scrabble to cross the border, trying to reach a land they call El Paraíso. 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?

Among the Lost

What Goes Unsaid: A Memoir of Fathers Who Never Were

Epitafio y Estela son miembros de una organización criminal dedicada al tráfico de personas, cuyas víctimas son, en su gran mayoría, migrantes centroamericanos que en su afán de alcanzar mejores condiciones de vida en Estados Unidos ingresan a territorio mexicano sin imaginar que ahí se toparán con una aduana infernal marcada por la violencia, el odio y los intereses más mezquinos. La historia de amor latente entre ambos protagonistas parece anunciar la posibilidad de su absolución, pero ésta se ve frustrada fatalmente cuando el jefe de su banda, un cura desalmado, decide prescindir de ellos y les tiende a traición una trampa destinada a eliminarlos. La nueva novela de Emiliano Monge, ganador en 2012 del Premio Jaén (España), es una implacable obra sobre un mundo espeluznante, narrada con una maestría literaria inigualable. ENGLISH DESCRIPTION This work recreates the collective drama of migration in a space spoiled by misery and the morality of those who inhabit it, but also a space that gives rise to an enigmatic story of unexpected love. Epitafio and Estela are members of a criminal organization involved in human trafficking. Their victims are generally Central American migrants who enter the Mexican territory in their eagerness to reach better living conditions in the United States, without ever imagining that they will come across a diabolical customs department marked by violence, hatred, and mean-spirited interests. The story of unrequited love between the protagonists seems to portend the possibility of their absolution, but this notion is fatally thwarted when the leader of their group, a heartless priest, decides to get rid of them and lays a trap destined to eliminate them. The new novel by Emiliano Monge, winner of the 2012 Jaen Prize (Spain), is a ruthless look at a horrific world, narrated with incomparable literary mastery.

Las tierras arrasadas (Spanish Edition)

Literatura Random House

De Emiliano Monge, autor de Las tierras arrasadas, ganadora del IX Premio Iberoamericano de Novela Elena Poniatowska.Los once cuentos reunidos en este libro dibujan el fantasma de una constelación. Y el signo que preside esta constelación es el de la Violencia.La superficie más honda es un bestiario del hombre como lobo de sí mismo: de la árida intimidad del terror familiar hasta la voracidad de un linchamiento, físico o mediático, la ira y la erosión son aquí las soberanas. Como si los personajes fueran peones de una voluntad vaporosa pero total, el destino personal y el devenir social actúan en estos relatos como una fuerza anónima que lo ordena todo. Es decir: que lo disuelve todo.Con un estilo implacable, Emiliano Monge construye precisas atmósferas de opresión. Desde las primeras palabras de cada cuento, se insinúa una vaguedad acechante, un vacío que se expande feroz hasta llevar a los microuniversos a su disolución final. Agujeros negros de ironía se abren por todas partes, pero en este caso el humor no ofrece un alivio o una salida, sino que hace aún más profunda la corrosión. Personajes -y lectores- se descubren sospechando que quizás nunca han estado aquí, en esta delgada profundidad que llamamos mundo, y al final no queda más consuelo que el de la desbandada.ENGLISH DESCRIPTIONBy Emiliano Monge, author of Las tierras arrasadas, winner of the 9th Elena Poniatowska Iberoamerican Novel Prize. The eleven short stories gathered in this book depict the ghost of a constellation. And the ruling sign of this constellation is that of Violence. The Deepest Surface is a bestiary of man as the wolf himself: from the dry intimacy of familiar terror to the voracity of a lynching―either physical or by the media―here, wrath and erosion are king. As if the characters were pawns of some diaphanous will, personal destiny and social transformation act in these tales like an anonymous force that arranges everything. That is to say: it dissolves everything. With a merciless style, Emiliano Monge constructs precise atmospheres of oppression. From the first words in each story, a lurking vagueness insinuates itself, an emptiness that expands ferociously until it pushes the microuniverses to their final dissolution. Black holes of irony open up all around, but in this case humor doesn’t offer relief or a way out, but rather makes the corrosion more profound. Characters―and readers―discover themselves suspecting that perhaps they have never been here, in this thin depth that we call the world, and in the end there is no solace but that of escape.

La superficie más honda / The Deepest Surface (Spanish Edition)

Ésta es una historia sobre la necesidad de escapar de los demás y de uno mismo, sobre el abandono, el amor y los machismos, sobre aquello que se dice, aquello que se insinúa y aquello que se calla, sobre la mentira y las diferentes violencias que enfrentamos. No contar todo, novela de no ficción, presenta la saga de los Monge, al mismo tiempo que cuenta la historia del país que habitaron. El abuelo, Carlos Monge McKey, descendiente de irlandeses, finge su propia muerte, haciendo estallar la cantera de su cuñado. El padre, Carlos Monge Sánchez, rompe con su familia y con su propia historia para irse a Guerrero, donde, convertido en guerrillero, luchará al lado de Genaro Vázquez. El hijo, Emiliano Monge García, nacerá enfermo y vivirá sus primeros años hospitalizado, por lo que será considerado como el débil de su familia y por lo cual erigirá un mundo de ficciones que con los años se irá haciendo más y más complejo y del que después ya no podrá escapar, más que escapando de todo. No contar todo es la genealogía de una triple huida, el recordatorio de que una desbandada también puede ser una familia. ENGLISH DESCRIPTION This is a story about the necessity to escape from others and from oneself; about neglect, love, and machismo; about what is said, what is insinuated, and what is left unsaid; about lies and the various forms of violence we face.
Not Telling Everything, a non-fiction novel, presents the saga of the Monge family while telling the story of the country they lived in. The grandfather, Carlos Monge McKey, descendant of Irishmen, fakes his own death, allowing his brother-in-law’s quarry to explode. The father, Carlos Monge Sánchez, breaks with his family and with his own history to go to Guerrero, where, as a guerrilla, he fights alongside Genaro Vázquez. The son, Emiliano Monge García, is born ill and lives his earliest years in the hospital, for which he is considered the weak one of the family, and because of which he builds a world of fiction that becomes more and more complex over the years, eventually preventing him from escaping it unless he is escaping everything.
Not Telling Everything is the genealogy of a triple escape, the reminder that a jailbreak can also be a family.

No contar todo / Not Telling Everything (Spanish Edition)

TIERRAS ARRASADAS, LAS

Debolsillo]

« Las ficciones de Monge son la metáfora exacta de la locura del mundo ». -The Observer Todo, tal y como lo conocíamos, ha cambiado. El calor es agobiante&nbsp;se ha agrietado el cielo y la geografía es otra. La humanidad, además, se ha du­plicado. Entonces se desata una guerra global entre fuerzas igualadas cuya clave parecerían ser las niñas y niños de los orfanatorios. En una de esas instituciones comienza la más arriesgada y madura de las novelas de Emiliano Monge. Tejer la oscuridad es una distopía que reinventa nuestros mitos y desentraña nuestra idea de indivi­duo y colectividad, mientras nos cuenta la liberación de un grupo de muchachos, así como la diáspora que emprenderán acompañados de su descendencia&nbsp;atravesando un mundo desolado, huyendo de perse­guidores incansables y buscando el sitio que les fuera prometido, donde podrán rendir culto a sus dioses, enhebrar un nuevo lenguaje y habitar la oscuridad. Cruzada por un sinfín de voces, Tejer la oscuridad presenta la eterna lucha entre el nosotros y el yo, deja que resuene en sus páginas el eco de libros antiguos y de diversas formas de escritura olvidadas y permite al lector imaginar otra forma de entender el tiempo, el espacio, la materia, el amor y la amistad. ENGLISH DESCRIPTION "Monge's fiction is the exact metaphor for the world's madness." -The Observer &nbsp; Everything, as we knew it, has changed. &nbsp; The heat is overbearing, the sky has cracked, and the geography has changed. &nbsp; Additionally, humanity has doubled. Then a global war breaks out between equal forces whose key seems to be the girls and boys in orphanages. Emiliano Monge's riskiest and most complete novels begins in one of these institutions. &nbsp; Weaving Darkness is a dystopia that reinvents our myths and clears up our idea of individuality and community. While also telling us about the freeing of a group of kids, crossing a gloomy world, fleeing from tireless persecutors, and looking for the place that was promised to them, where they can worship their gods, create a new language, and inhabit the darkness. &nbsp; Crossed by countless voices, Weaving Darkness presents the eternal struggle between the "self" and the "us"; it allows the echo of old books, and other forgotten forms of writing, to resonate within its pages; and allows readers to imagine another way of understanding time, space, matter, love, and friendship.

Tejer la oscuridad / Weaving Darkness (MAPA DE LAS LENGUAS) (Spanish Edition)

Justo antes del final / Right Before the End (Spanish Edition)

See the best price to sell, buy, or rent books by Monge, Emiliano. BookScouter helps to compare book prices from 25+ online bookstores and 30+ buyback vendors with a single search.

Books by Monge, Emiliano