Fascinating. I am grateful for the chance to read this in translation and may have accidentally just become a fan of the translator. ( )

concentración del tiempo y el espacio, lugar de tensiones entre vigilados y vigilantes, que pueden ver intercambiadas sus posiciones, aquí la cárcel, el "Palacio Negro" de Lecumberri, se convierte en un pequeño y tenso mundo trágico, circunscrito por una estructura narrativa vigorosa, por un lenguaje implacable que adquiere la textura misma de estas vidas llevadas al límite, acosadas por sus obsesiones, sus temores, sus ansias. Obra maestra de la novela corta, El apando reafirma a un escritor capaz de dar el máximo de intensidad en el mínimo de extensión y de imprimir en nuestra memoria un núcleo de personajes desgarradamente vivos.

The Hole is a short, intense vignette of an attempt to smuggle drugs into a prison. The book uses its experimental elements well: the unbroken paragraph of text conveys the crushing focus and desperation of the novel's protagonists; its persistent and unusual metaphors underscore the dehumanizing and brutalizing nature of the prison; and its mixture of violent and sexual language demonstrate the interplay of violence and sexual exploitation at work in the narrative. ( )

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. ( )

A Simple Short Story with Confused Details

"The Hole" seems to have been written quickly and briskly, and that is how it reads. It is a short story about three miserable prisoners waiting for drugs to arrive during visiting hours.

The book is written in a non-traditional, almost stream-of-consciousness style. Many sentences run on, almost the entire length of the short pages, but this does not take away from the readability. There are no paragraph divisions either, though the grammar is always complete.

Unfortunately, the book suffers from confused details that are not fully fleshed out. The entirety of the book takes place in the few moments the prisoners spend waiting for the arrival, and then the actual arrival. However, it is difficult to understand exactly why they need to be clustered around a single hole that is either on the ground or on a wall. Likewise, the circumstances around the climax - a fight - are unclear.

The translators have done a fine job because the book is so readable. It can be finished in about an our.

Unfortunately, the price tag is exorbitant for a book with a twenty page commentary and a sixty page story. ( )