to the rain looming over mexico city open your jaws for us make kids laugh dogs bark

This prize-winning translation haunts.

In the current environment of relentless political strife . . . debate deteriorates into name-calling; partisans morph into zealots, complex issues are reduced to binary terms, and hostility seethes just beneath the surface.

They’d take the girls to the hills for three or five days.

“He is a survivor, but he doesn’t write like one.”—Roberto Bolaño