Juan Pablo Villalobos - Down the Rabbit Hole

mole — a thick Mexican chili sauce combining complex flavors, or a dish based on this sauce. Ingredients can include black pepper, cumin, cloves, aniseed, tomatoes, onion, bread, garlic, sesame seeds, dried fruit, and chocolate.

tampiqueña — marinated steak served with cheese and enchiladas or tortilla chips.

charro — a traditional Mexican horseman, somewhat like the North American cowboy. Charros take part in charreadas (a little like rodeos), and wear very distinctive colorful clothing, including a wide-brimmed hat.

Poza Rica — a medium-sized industrial city in the state of Veracruz. Founded in 1951 and with a skyline dominated by modern buildings and the remnants of the local oil industry, it is not renowned for its beauty.

La Chona — the local name for the city of Encarnación de Díaz, a town in the state of Jalisco, also not renowned for its beauty.

naco — a derogatory Mexican term that means a vulgar person with no class, style, or education, and tends to be used by people from the dominant class to refer to those of the lower class, although it is malleable and can also be used to denigrate “new money.”

“The Cowboy Mouse” (“El Ratón Vaquero”) was a very evocative 1930s Mexican children’s song composed by Francisco Gabilondo Soler, about an English-speaking mouse with a cowboy hat and two pistols.

“ Down the Rabbit Hole is a dazzling and unsettling literary exercise … Villalobos plays with a double-edged sword: the horror of our reactions as readers is contrasted with the almost trivial way the narrator describes his daily existence … Down the Rabbit Hole could well become a classic … A novel that breaks our hearts (which we knew were already broken, but which still hurt) and invites us both to laugh and inevitably to reflect on the political subtext, highly relevant in a contemporary context.”

— Ricardo García Mainou, El Economista

“A beautifully realized short novel that narrates the daily life of a powerful drug lord ensconced in his palatial hideaway, seen through the clear eyes of his young son … A brief and majestic debut that converts the ‘drug novel’ into a fascinating narrative.”

— Matías Néspolo, El Mundo

“Refreshingly original.”

—Ángel Gurría-Quintana, Financial Times

“With this book we have discovered Juan Pablo Villalobos, a linguistic virtuoso able to penetrate the elusive world of literature, shedding light on many of its mysteries.”

— José Antonio Aguado, Diari de Terrassa

“This is a novel about failing to understand the bigger picture, and in its absence we can see it more clearly.”

— Nicholas Lezard, The Guardian , Choice of the Week

“The cumulative parodic effect is chillingly powerful.”

— Edward King, The Sunday Times (London)

“Don’t miss this refreshing little novel, even if it is only to enjoy the delicious literary comfort that allows us to endure the sordid, cruel reality of the world it describes.”

— Enrique García Fuentes, Hoy de Extremadura

“With Down the Rabbit Hole , Juan Pablo Villalobos has made a dramatic entrance into the literary world. It is a book that must be read for its great aesthetic value and darkly humorous tone. A book that throws a clear light on a dark subject.”

— Teresa García Díaz, Amerika

“Amidst this boom of so-called ‘narco-literature,’ Villalobos has managed to avoid lapsing into moralism through the voice of his child narrator, which is strange and cruel in its innocence.”

— Gabriela Wiener, El País

Juan Pablo Villalobos was born in Guadalajara, Mexico, in 1973. He studied marketing and Spanish literature. He has researched such diverse topics as the influence of the avant-garde on the work of César Aira and the flexibility of pipelines for electrical installations. Down the Rabbit Hole , short-listed for the Guardian First Book Prize, is his first novel.