José Revueltas, revolutionary communist and writer, wrote El Apando (The Hole) while incarcerated in the bowels of El Palacio de Lecumberri for his participation in the Mexico City student movement of 1968. It is a stark, gritty, and haunting prison novel that pits the petty violence and depravities of incarcerated addicts against the immobilizing horrors of prison as a social institution. Through feverish, claustrophobic, and compassionate prose, Revueltas posits the suffering of Mexico’s lumpenproletariat and the institutions that oppress them as an essential social and political question. We talk about gender, the fractal nature of prisons and social violence, tropes of prison narratives, and how fun it is to talk about a book for nearly as long as it takes to read it.
The Hole translated by Sophie Hughes and Amanda Hopkinson
El Apando (1976), dir. Felipe Cazals: link
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