DOWN THE RABBIT HOLE (Fiesta en la madriguera) by Juan Pablo Villalobos (& Other Stories, 2011)
This odd novella (just 70 pages long) is about the world of a violent drug gang as seen from the perspective of a 7-year old boy, Tochtli, the son of a drug baron.
The title, of course, makes you think of the surreal underworld Alice falls into, but this Mexican ‘wonderland’ is too imbedded in reality to rank as a fantasy, and it certainly not a children’s book.
This boy’s name means ‘rabbit’ in Nahuatl, Mexico’s main indigenous language. The novel’s translator, Rosalind Harvey, notes that most of the character’s names refer to some kind of animal; his boy’s father’s name is Yolcault which translates as ‘rattlesnake’. Continue reading
