El apando

by José Revueltas

Set in a Mexican prison in the late 1960s, The Hole follows three inmates as they plot to sneak in drugs under the noses of their ape-like guards. The inmates desperately need to secure their next fix, and hatch a plan that involves convincing one of their mothers to bring the drugs into the prison, inside her person. But everything about their plan 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 how deformed and wretched institutions create even more deformed and wretched individuals.

Genres: Fiction, Short Stories, Novella, Latin American, Spanish Literature, Literature, Latin American Literature

57 pages, Paperback

First published September 10, 1969

About the author

José Revueltas Sánchez was a Mexican writer, essayist, and political activist. He was part of an important artistic family that included his siblings Silvestre, Fermín and Rosaura.

Reviews

[Jon Nakapalau · Rating 5 out of 5]

Every once in awhile you read a book and wonder why you have not heard more about the author - why they have not been acknowledged for the depth and originality of their work. José Revueltas has written one of the best 'prison' novels ever. Tinged with Beckettian and Foucauldian concepts that question the whole concept of guard/prisoner this book is a powerful statement on punishment and crime.

[foteini_dl · Rating 4 out of 5]

Ξέρετε αυτά τα (μικρά) βιβλία που σε αρπάζουν από την πρώτη σελίδα και – παρόλο που είναι υπεύθυνα για έναν κόμπο στο λαιμό – δε δυο αφήνουν άλλη επιλογή παρά να τα διαβάσεις με μια ανάσα; Ε, τέτοιο βιβλίο είναι Η τρύπα .

Ο μακροπερίοδος λόγος του Revueltas και ο συνδυασμός λέξεων όπως «κρατούμενοι σε κίνηση», «αιχμάλωτοι σε ζωολογική κλίμακα», «ενδιάμεσου βιολογικού είδους», «παντοτινά τιποτένιοι, αιχμάλωτοι σε μια ατέλειωτη κίνηση» ζωντανεύουν μπροστά στα μάτια σου τη βία των φυλακών (του κόσμου, γενικά).

Ποιος να το περίμενε, τελικά, δεν είναι και τόσο μικρό βιβλίο.

Υ.Γ.1: Στην εισαγωγή λέει ότι η αρχιτεκτονική δομή της Φυλακής Λεκουμπέρι στο Μεξικό, που χτίστηκε κατά τη διάρκεια της δικτατορίας του Porfirio Diaz, είναι βασισμένη στο μοντέλου του Πανοπτικού του Jeremy Bentham και λειτουργεί σαν φυλακή και θέατρο μαζί. Δηλαδή, οι φυλακισμένοι είναι ορατοί, ενώ με αυτόν τον τρόπο μεταμορφώνονται σε παράδειγμα και θέαμα. Ζοφερό παράδειγμα πως η αρχιτεκτονική, που επηρεάζεται ενίοτε από τη φιλοσοφία, δεν υπηρετεί πάντα ευγενικούς σκοπούς.

Υ.Γ.2: Έχω καταλήξει ότι μ’ αρέσουν λίγο παραπάνω τα μινιμαλιστικά εξώφυλλα που απεικονίζουν την ατμόσφαιρα του βιβλίου. Οπότε, μόνο πετυχημένο μπορώ να χαρακτηρίσω το εν λόγω εξώφυλλο. Συνυπολογίζοντας και την εξαιρετική μετάφραση του Κρίτωνα Ηλιόπουλου (εγγύηση), μόνο ένα μεγάλο μπράβο μπορώ να πω στις εκδόσεις Ακυβέρνητες Πολιτείες.

Υ.Γ.3: Τα υστερόγραφα είναι μεγαλύτερα από το κύριο σώμα της, ας πούμε, κριτικής. Now, that's a first.

[od1_40reads · Rating 5 out of 5]

Unfolding in real time, exactly as long as it takes to read, José Revueltas’ ‘The Hole’ was intended to be read in one sitting – which I highly recommend you do – and at only 50ish pages this is perfectly possible.

Written in 1969, it takes place in Mexico’s Lecumberri prison, referred to locally as The Black Palace, which closed in 1976. It is at first a slow, dark decent into hell, which then switches pace and accumulates in the final blistering 20 pages, which Álvaro Enrigue refers to in the book’s introduction as ‘one of the greatest pieces of twentieth-century writing composed in Spanish’. And it really is something to read!

I was certainly reminded of Fernanda Melchor, and so if you enjoyed and had the stomach for Hurricane Season and In Paradais, I would definitely say give this 45mins of your time!

[Makis Dionis · Rating 5 out of 5]

Ένα σύντομο κομψοτέχνημα , καθόλου φειδωλό νοημάτων ωστόσο.
Μια αρτιστικ απόδοση της βίας, ως θέαμα κ τιμωρία.
Θεατές οι δεσμοφύλακες/πίθηκοι, σε μια αντανάκλαση της κοινωνίας και της ρυπαρότητας που παράγει

[Diana · Rating 5 out of 5]

No sé cómo lleven ustedes los podcasts, pero yo últimamente brinco de uno a otro, con temas de lo más diverso y no me hallo. La cosa es que el otro día me encontré uno sobre Lecumberri, y luego otro sobre la película Escape from Alcatraz. Y entonces vi la película, que sí está muy buena, pero me dejó con un sabor raro, como de cárcel buena onda, como Orange Is the New Black. Y la verdad es que en México tuvimos una cárcel de terror absoluto (no que ahora no las tengamos, pero Lecumberri es una historia muy particular de abusos y desigualdad). Por eso me animé a revisitar El apando, la novelita (breve, pues, pero es un novelón) que José Revueltas escribió en 1969 durante su condena en Lecumberri. La había leído en 2005 (calculo) y sólo recordaba algunas imágenes. Han pasado muchos años desde esa primera lectura, y ahora la encontré, uf, brutal: la narración de la sordidez, la construcción de los personajes, la atmósfera... Es una novela agotadora, de un solo párrafo, que deja una sensación como pegajosa y muy incómoda y triste. José Revueltas es un autor muy duro, muy difícil de leer, no tanto por su estilo, aunque también, sino por la crudeza con la que enfrenta ciertos temas. Y, sin embargo, también me parece una lectura obligatoria.

[jeremy · Rating 4 out of 5]

josé revueltas's the hole (el apando) must have seemed rather outrageous upon its publication nearly a half-century ago (1969). revueltas, a mexican writer and political activist (from a notable family of fellow creatives [composer, painter, and actress siblings]), set his slim, yet hardly slight novella in a prison – seemingly not too dissimilar from the one (lecumberri, near mexico city) in which he served time and penned this work. revueltas was jailed for dissident activities and his participation in the 1968 student movement, when he was already in his mid 50s and publicly known as an intellectual.

the hole, dedicated to pablo neruda, was written as a single paragraph, with the continuous action unfolding over the course of about 30 minutes. three inmates impatiently await the arrival of one of their mothers, who has plans to smuggle in drugs during a brief visit to the prison. with sordid conditions and depraved guards (or "apes," as they're referred to), revueltas's institution is more or less what we've (now) collectively come to understand so many prisons to be: violent, often lawless locales where rights are few and cruelty pervades (especially by those charged with oversight and order).

the hole has garnered praise by the likes of neruda, octavio paz, and valeria luiselli, with the latter stating, "it is impossible to understand contemporary latin american literature with out revueltas's masterpiece." easily read in a single sitting, the hole is a penetrating, potent account (however fictionalized, as revueltas himself was never in lecumberri's "hole") of prison life and the barbarity that exists both within its walls and within the hearts and minds of prisoner and guard alike. álvaro enrigue, author of sudden death (and husband to the aforementioned luiselli), wrote the english language version's essential introduction.

they were captive there, the apes, just like the rest of them, male and female; or rather, male and male, the pair of them in their cage, not quite despairing, not yet totally desperate, pacing from one side to the other, detained but in motion, trapped on the zoological scale as if someone—the others, all humanity—had irreverently washed their hands of the matter, this matter of them being apes, one they too wanted to forget, apes when all's said and done, who didn't or refused to get it, captive whichever way you looked at them, penned in that two-story-high barred cage, in their blue uniforms with shining badges on their heads, in their unregimented to- and fro-ing, natural, regular, never managing to take the one step that would allow them to emerge from the interspecies in which they moved, walked, copulated, cruel and lacking all recollection...

*translated from the spanish by amanda hopkinson (saramago, piglia, poniatowska, allende, et al.) & sophie hughes (jufresa, hasbún, repila, bilbao, et al.)

[Korcan Derinsu · Rating 4 out of 5]

Çok iyi yazılmış, tek nefeste -derin bir nefes- okunan etkileyici uzun bir hikaye.

[Christopher Robinson · Rating 5 out of 5]

I sat down this morning with some coffee, determined to read The Hole in one sitting. This was not a particularly difficult or arduous task; indeed, it took me only about an hour to get through the whole thing, including the wonderful introduction (which I didn’t read until after having read the main text, as is my custom). People who had recommended The Hole to me all insisted that reading it in this way, with no breaks or interruptions, was the only way to read it. Having trusted their advice and done exactly that, I must wholeheartedly agree. I can’t imagine breaking up this reading experience. It is so urgent, so riveting. There is so much dread and anticipation and anxiousness in this slim volume, and given the subject matter it would almost be an act of disrespect to take a break along the way. To step inside The Hole is to submit yourself to a real-time almost-hour inside of a prison cell with three wretched addicts as your only company. You don’t get out until they get out, and since they never really get out, afterward a part of yourself will always be stuck inside the hole, that claustrophobic space of torturous boredom, confinement and psychological/spiritual brutality.

It wasn’t only the story that riveted me so. The quality of the writing (via the absolutely gorgeous translation) is to die for. It ticked all of my boxes. The sentences are long, lush, winding, almost ecstatically poetic. It flows beautifully and there is no hint of dryness or linguistic clumsiness. I applaud Amanda Hopkinson and Sophie Hughes for the stunning work they have done in translating this tiny beast into English. The entire thing is presented as one long paragraph, a stylistic conceit of which I am very much an ardent fan (when it suits the story, anyway, and in this case it most definitely does). The voice of the narrator is cynical and pessimistic and even darkly hilarious at time. And all of this serves to create the most compelling and consuming prison narrative I’ve read since Hubert Selby, Jr.’s The Room.

Anyway, I’ll stop gushing now. My conclusion is simply that The Hole was an absolutely stunning reading experience and one that I would recommended to just about anybody who is looking for an excellent, quick, dark read. Incredible stuff.

[John Dishwasher John Dishwasher · Rating 3 out of 5]

This story revolves around prisoners being kept in a punishment cell, or apando. Revueltas creates tension in the story by letting us know the prisoners are about to attempt an escape, but by not telling us their plan. This is an effective hook which actually could make a good reboot for Steven Seagal style movies. Anyway, most importantly to me, all of the characters in this book -- guards, visitors, and convicts -- are portrayed as prisoners in this system. And the most guilty of them all? Not a prisoner, but the mother of one of the prisoners. Why? For bringing her imprisoned son into the world in the first place! Severely nihilistic. I’ve seen this argument referred to as anti-natalism and I’ve read a very different iteration of it in 'Kaddish for an Unborn Child' by nobel winner Imre Kertesz. The two books are strangely comparable though worlds apart in how they make their argument. Another noted exponent of the idea that having children is immoral is the Colombian author Fernando Vallejo.

The short novella is one long paragraph. Within that paragraph the point of view changes a couple of times … I think. This was difficult for a non-native Spanish reader and I missed a lot. There may be a kind of Golgotha thing going on here, too. With three prisoners “on the cross” and three visitors there to cry at their feet as they try to escape and save themselves (including a possible mother Mary figure who unsuccessfully tries to sneak drugs to them in her vagina). I should read the book a second time because it feels so deep, but I’m not patient enough for that; and sometimes letting books keep their mystery keeps them alive in my subconscious. Once, a full year after not understanding 'Klim Samgin' by Maxim Gorky, the guiding meaning of the book popped into my head.

[Justin Evans · Rating 5 out of 5]

Great, really great. It's astonishing, given the over-the-top praise on the back cover, that this little story lives up to the hype. The translators deserve a prize.

[Kyriaki · Rating 3 out of 5]

2,5⭐

Δεν ξέρω τι έφταιξε με τούτο εδώ το μικρό βιβλιαράκι αλλά εγώ δεν ενθουσιάστηκα. Το διάβασα μέσα σε λίγες ώρες, είχε πολύ ωραία γραφή αλλά κατά τα άλλα δεν με άγγιξε. Δεν ήταν για μένα ή δεν ήμουν εγώ σε φάση να το διαβάσω, δεν ξέρω.......η εισαγωγή στην οποία έκανε μια μικρή ανάλυση και του κειμένου αλλά και της κοινωνικοπολιτικής κατάστασης κάτω από την οποία γράφτηκε είχε πολύ ενδιαφέρον!

[Elyse Hdez · Rating 3 out of 5]

Tengo todo un conflicto con este libro. Me gustó! Pero la temática es muy fuerte y había momentos en que necesitaba dejarlo. No es para nada una lectura ligera aunque el libro no tenga más de 100 páginas.

Sobre el argumento, no me sorprendería que la vida en la cárcel fuera así realmente. Creo que eso es lo que Revueltas quería exponer en el libro, y lo logró, ahora, ¿qué más esconden las prisiones? Y lejos de ser centros de readaptación social, vuelven al humano menos humano.

[Leopoldo · Rating 5 out of 5]

El sistema carcelario mexicano ha estado jodidísimo desde hace ya muchos años. Revueltas lo vivió en carne propia. Estuvo recluído en uno de los sitios más espeluznantes de la Ciudad de México: el Palacio Negro de Lecumberri. Parte de esa experiencia se recoge en "El apando", una de las obras más sucintas y horripilantes de la literatura mexicana.

La anécdota va así: tres criminales están en aislamiento, "apandados" en una celda. Uno de ellos, tuerto y tullido, espera a que venga a visitarlo su madre. Pero todo es parte del plan: los otros dos lo han convencido de que la mujer meta droga al reclusorio de contrabando.

La novela es apasionante, es una bomba de indignación y de ultraje. Nos muestra al humano en su estado más animal, lo que puede lograr el sistema inmisericorde y el total aislamiento con la razón de un ser humano. Ampliamente recomendada.

[Krystina · Rating 5 out of 5]

This has got to be one of the finest things I’ve ever read. Written in the prison that is the novel’s setting, a 50 page paragraph tells the real-time story of three men confined and going mad with drug withdrawal and three women making their way through the prison to cause a scene and deliver them heroin stuffed inside an old woman’s womb. That connection of the womb and the cell is incredible. There are so many layers to this story; I immediately re-read it after finishing the first time and I’m tempted to read it again.

The introduction does an amazing job of explaining the history of this prison (after building it, the architect was imprisoned in it!), putting it in context within Mexican history, and giving us background on the author.

[oscar · Rating 5 out of 5]

Si mientras avanzas en la lectura no percibes el aroma a caño, a hierro mojado que suele esparcir la sangre que esta por secarse y sobre todo, el olor del hastio y la desesperacion, regresa al principio. No lo estas leyendo bien.

[Heronimo Gieronymus · Rating 5 out of 5]

This brand new 2018 New Directions edition of José Revueltas's extremely short 1969 novel THE HOLE is a very small and very precious object. You can and should read it in one abbreviated sitting. And you should also sit with it, turn it over in your hands, reflect on it. Few books I have grappled with in recent memory are at the same time such rich and fascinating objects. One might wish to call it an artifact, though the fact remains that part of what makes this edition so fascinating is that it is a very current thing, providing access for North American readers to a massively important literary work wherefore they previously had none. Should I call it a novel? Many will of course call it a novella. In reality, there are certainly even short stories out there that supersede it in word count. In his fascinating introduction Álvaro Enrigue insist on calling THE HOLE a novel. I am inclined to follow suit. Perhaps it is the meal in a pill progress always promised but never provided. Bite-sized. But a feast. Or perhaps a very small thing of so profound a density as to consign it to a category of things science cannot yet properly comprehend. José Revueltas wrote THE HOLE as a political prisoner held apart from his revolutionary comrades, most of whom were far younger then himself, with the larger population of miscellaneous criminals in Mexico City's infamous Lecumberri Prison, where the novel takes place. It is short on plot. Three criminals, confined to the hole, await three female visitors who are to smuggle in heroin and hand it over to them under the camouflage of a diversionary uproar. Things don’t go smoothly, as well they might not. Though a Marxist--and a Marxist more or less jailed for being a Marxist--Revueltas often found himself ill-fitted to leftist organizations and it is not hard to see why: he has few illusions about both the ugliness of oppression and the tendency of the oppressed to revert to barbarism. THE HOLE is the furthest possible thing from a socialist realist novel of proletarian determination and concomitant uplift. It is a dismal and incendiary novel operating at the level of the irreducibly bestial. The guards are called "apes," and are just prisoners by another name. Our narrator imagines the guards at home. "Life," he muses, "was one long not knowing anything at all: not knowing that they were in their cage, husband and wife, husband and husband, wife and children, father and father, sons and fathers, terrified, universal apes." The grim human landscape of THE HOLE is explicitly zoological. Everybody here has already been destroyed yet remains animated by consuming desperation. The prose is thick and torrential. Composed of one unbroken paragraph, the novel resembles less the digressive and obsessional novels of Thomas Bernhard than it does some of the future apocalyptic deluges of László Krasznahorkai. It contains and ultimately culminates in harrowing, indelible images. It sets out to do violence unto the brain what will not easily be erased nor easily effaced. It is revolutionary literature but about as far as things get from utopian. It is so unholy as to be sacred. It is a cry from hell clamorous with pulsing life. It is a piece of Inferno. If you come to art for truth, truth here ye shall find, but an upsetting and disconcerting form of it. Revueltas may well have believed in solidarity, and prison stories often revel in its embattled manifestations, but you will not find evidence of it here. Survival and desperation are often productive of the most callow forms of self-seeking. Ugly situations often lead to terminal behaviour and grave aberrations. THE HOLE gives uncommonly powerful voice to these things. Uncommonly powerful almost certainly because unpleasantly lived.

[Ajelet Cortés · Rating 2 out of 5]

José Revueltas – El apando (1969)

«En la memoria de Polonio la palabra nadien se había clavado, insólita, singular, como si fuese la suma de un número infinito de significaciones. Nadien, este plural triste. De nadie era la culpa, del destino, de la vida, de la pinche suerte, de nadien.»

[2/5] ★★☆☆☆

Reseña:
El libro nos relata el intento de tres sujetos recluidos en El Palacio de Lecumberri, apoyados por la madre de uno de ellos para ingresar droga en el penal, cosa que no les será nada fácil debido a que, por su mal comportamiento han sido “apandados”, término que se usaba para referirse a uno de los castigos más crueles en el reclusorio.

“El Apando” servía para separar a los reos y encerrarlos en celdas pequeñas y oscuras, sin acceso a luz, con poca ventilación y sin inodoros.

Es un libro bastante crudo y nos revela el salvajismo y los abusos del sistema penitenciario en México, que ya desde entonces se caracterizaba por ser un ambiente no solo hostil sino bastante depravado.

Es una novela muy corta, que nos recuerda que en pocas palabras se pueden decir muchas cosas. En ella se ven reflejados los límites de la adicción, la violencia, el deseo y los pensamientos mas atroces a los que se enfrenta un recluso al que la vida ya no puede ofrecerle más.

Opinión:
Comencé este libro con expectativas muy altas, no sé qué esperaba encontrar, pero estoy segura de que eso influyó mucho en mi experiencia con él.

Tuve mucho interés en los hechos que llevaron a José Revueltas a Lecumberri donde escribió este libro y me parece fascinante que en medio de un ambiente tan corrupto y violento haya podido escribir.

Es un relato bastante crudo y trágico en el que se hace una crítica contundente al sistema penitenciario mexicano, pero también se habla de aquella gente que no tiene más nada que perder, de las consecuencias que nuestras decisiones ocasionan y de las injusticias que recaen en aquellos que ya no tienen credibilidad ante la sociedad.

Aunque no es de mis libros favoritos, no me arrepiento de haberlo leído, las cosas que uno podría imaginarse sobre las vivencias dentro de los penales creo que no se acercan ni tantito a la realidad, así que este pequeño vistazo a ese mundo es necesario, aunque sea abrumador para salir un poco de la burbuja en que muchos nos encontramos, en la que estas cosas no existen solo porque no las podemos ver.

También cabe añadir que en el año 1975 el director Felipe Cazals llevó al cine mexicano una adaptación de esta obra de José Revueltas en caso de que alguno esté interesado en seguirle con la película.

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Tiempo Literario
José Revueltas – El Apando (1969) | Video Reseña
https://youtu.be/VCnrKf1leVQ
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[Ian Mond · Rating 4 out of 5]

The Hole by Jose Revueltas (originally published in 1969, recently translated into English) is further proof that either I have a limited vocabulary or the English language isn’t adequate at describing an intense reading experience.

At less than 13,000 words, and written by Revueltas while he was a guest at Lecumberri Prison in Mexico, The Hole tells the story of Polonio, the Albino and the Prick and their plan to smuggle heroin into the prison (they’re jonesing for a fix). The story is told in one unfolding paragraph, a barrage of words that mimics (I have to assume) the experience of living in a narrow cell where the only access to the outside world is a hatch large enough for a plate of soup and a small hole to see through. It’s an extraordinary sustained piece of writing that’s both awful and yet at times comical.

The edition I read came with a very good Introduction by Alvaro Enrigue that provides background for Revueltas (who was a political prisoner) and historical context. It also spoils the story so read it after you’ve read The Hole.

[Alex Gracia · Rating 4 out of 5]

Una lectura que a mi gusto es algo complicada por el estilo de Revueltas. Esta ininterrupción de hechos e imágenes, continuo uso de comas y digresiones, logran su cometido de provocar agobio al lector y emular la sensación de un ambiente carcelario.
Destaco la adjetivación: "Se había puesto a gemir, en una forma irritante, repetida, monótona, artificiosa, con la que expresaba, en todos los detalles, la monstruosa condición de su alma perversa, ruin, infame, abyecta".
Los personajes: Albino, Polonio y El Carajo. Los mon@s, las mujeres.
La palabra "Nadien" y su número infinito de significaciones, el cómo esta cierra el texto y lo hace circular.
Y por último, un fragmento que me encantó: "y los tres monos, en un diabólico sucederse de
mutilaciones del espacio, triángulos, trapecios, paralelas, segmentos oblicuos o
perpendiculares, líneas y más líneas, rejas y más rejas, hasta impedir cualquier
movimiento de los gladiadores y dejarlos crucificados sobre el esquema monstruoso
de esta gigantesca derrota de la libertad a manos de la geometría".

3.5

[Angie Ingham · Rating 4 out of 5]

Short wild read. I'm discovering the world of translated books.

[Oscreads · Rating 5 out of 5]

Gooped and gagged.

[Luana · Rating 4 out of 5]

Le scimmie sono i poliziotti del carcere di Lecumberri, in cui sono rinchiusi Polonio, Albino e il Coglione, che cercano di farsi recapitare della droga dall'esterno. Ben presto, però, ci accorgiamo del fatto che secondo Revueltas, che in quel carcere c'è stato dopo essere stato arrestato nel 1968 come istigatore ideologico dei movimenti studenteschi, siamo tutti scimmie, prigionieri e carcerieri, governanti e governati, senza distinzione, tutti prigionieri del carcere che è il mondo.
Breve racconto che, come altri prima di me, definirei claustrofobico.

[Tülay]

Her şey zaten bundan ibaretti; farkına varamamaktan. Hayatın farkına varamamaktan.
Öfke dolu bir metin Hücre. Baştan sona soluksuz öfke. Madde bağımlısı üç arkadaşın hapishanede yaşadıkları kokuşmuşluk, çürümüşlük, ahlaksızlık, insanlık dışı durumlarını anlatmış Revueltas. Yazar sistem eleştirisini 41 sayfaya sığdırmış ve bunu da sert bir dil kullanarak yapmış. Hapishanede yaşayan diğer insanları maymunlara benzetmiş. Bu metaforla basliyor metin. Revueltas, kendi ülkesinin de muhalif isimlerinden biri. Metnin otobiyografik etkiler de içerdiği söylenebilir. Herkesin sevebileceği bir metin olduğunu düşünmüyorum. Okunur mu okunur. Ama benim icin cok derinlikli bir kitap degil. Iyi okumalar

[Renee · Rating 5 out of 5]

One paragraph. Told in real time. Many holes.

It’s not a descent into madness. You were already there.

[Christos · Rating 4 out of 5]

Κατά μια έννοια είμαστε όλοι κρατούμενοι, απλά με διαφορετικές δυνατότητες προαυλισμού.

[Mauro Barea · Rating 5 out of 5]

Relato largo. Novela corta. Qué más da. Cada vez que regreso a él el horror humano, sus excrecencias, sus miedos, anhelos y hasta sus contadas esperanzas siguen ahí, intactas en la genial narrativa de Revueltas, en un espacio cercado con celadores (monos) y piedras, con odio y con barrotes. Una maravilla encapsulada en 46 páginas que no conocen puntos y aparte, una maravilla condensada en un solo párrafo.

Si no es el mejor relato carcelario escrito hasta la fecha, por lo menos debería estar considerado dentro de los tres mejores de la historia de la literatura. Una pena que debido a sus ideales políticos, Revueltas no sea mucho más conocido y apreciado en Hispanoamérica.

Lo digo desde ya: este es un must-read. Para entender a México y gran parte de Latinoamérica, hay que leer a Revueltas.

[Drgnkingdom · Rating 4 out of 5]

An amazingly brutal read, it’ll take u an afternoon. Get into it. The first forty pages are heady and dense and then the last ten are like a gut punch. Subject matter is timely. No more prisons.

[küb · Rating 4 out of 5]

Hücre, tek paragraftan oluşan kırk sayfalık uzun öykü.
Jose Revueltas Meksikalı aktivist ve 1968’de tutuklanarak 16 yıl hapis cezasına çarptırılmış.
Kitapta gene bu yıllarda bir Meksika hapisanesi mahkumlarından Albino, Polonio ve Hergele’nin uyuşturucu yoksunluğunda hapisane hücresine kapatıldıkları zaman diliminde yaşadıkları patlamaya şahitlik. Öfke ve öfke patlaması.
Gerçek zamanlı geçen saldırgan bir metin diyebilirim. Ben ilk okuma sersemlemesi üzerine bir kere daha okuyup hikayede ne kadar çok katman saklandığını, ne kadar çok detay olduğunu görünce beğendiğimi söyleyebiliyorum.

[Bookfreak · Rating 3 out of 5]

Μπα, δεν τρελάθηκα.

[Αλέξανδρος Κάσσης · Rating 4 out of 5]

Το βιβλίο είναι ίδιαίτερο σε κάθε περίπτωση αφού η ιστορία συμβαίνει σε για μια πραγματική φυλακή. Αν λάβουμε δε υπόψη και την εποχή που γράφτηκε, μιλάμε για ένα πολύ σημαντικό βιβλίο. Υπάρχουν πολύ ενδιαφέρουσες σχετικές πληροφορίες στην αρχή βιβλίου. Επισης υπάρχουν πολύ ωραίες περιγραφές διαφόρων πραγμάτων που αναδεικνύουν και τις δυνατότητες του συγγραφέα.
Μπράβο στις Ακυβέρνητες Πολιτείες για την έκδοση.