Translation Rights TQE / On Childhood

This is not the typical and conventional account of childhood, but rather the first of three volumes of a Mexican drug lord ’s life and exploits. De la infancia (On Childhood) portrays in a luminous way, at times tender and at times disturbing, the biography of a Mexican child and his family victimised by obsessions and the almost tangible presences those obsessions summon. The father, a petty and violent thief, whose only interests are his next hit and finding the mother he has never met.  He visits healers and sorcerers of various kinds to know her whereabouts. The constantly beaten mother who as a last resort to keep her husband from abandoning them will do something utterly unconventional. The younger sister and brother paralysed by the presences that haunt the last house they have been forced to inhabit in order to avoid justice and revenge from their father’s former associates. And the would be drug lord, occasional participant of his father’s crimes, who will finally challenge his authority with the aid of the most powerful spiritual forces.

Mario González Suárez was born in Mexico City in 1964. He is author of several short novels ant two collections of short stories and is included in recent anthologies of Mexican fiction. He has received three grants from the Centro Mexicano de Escritores and from the Mexican Ministry of Culture.

His fervent readers have praised his truly gripping and original narrative, the effectiveness of his muscular prose, the vividness of his dialogue, the unquieting atmospheres that surround his characters and the element of surprise that marks his short novels. One of the most remarkable young fiction writers in México, he was granted the 1998 Gilberto Owen National Prize for El libro de las pasiones (The book of Passions).