Down the Rabbit Hole

Tochtli is no ordinary boy. He lives in a palace with his father, a tutor, servants and henchmen. He has lions and tigers in a cage in the garden. He has an extraordinary collection of hats. He knows how many bullets it takes to make a corpse…and where you would have to put them.

And all this because Tochtli's father, Yolcaut, is The King, a Mexican drugs baron whose career is on the rise. As drugs-related murders begin to hit the TV headlines, Yolcaut decides it's time for a trip out of the country. And so they head to Africa in search of Tochtli greatest desire - a Liberian Pygmy hippopotamus. As always, what Tochtli wants, Tochtli gets. Yet this doesn't stop his anxiety or stomach cramps, or the fact that he is a young boy growing up without a mother in a surreal, secluded world made up of violence, crime and prostitution. Or that half the people he knows are corpses.

Written from the perspective of the disturbed and precocious Tochtli, Mexican author Villalobo's first novel offers an original and darkly comic portrayal of Mexico's drugs scene. Translator Rosalind Harvey seamlessly recreates Tochtli's distinctive voice - with his flights of fancy and half-understood truths, this is clearly the voice of a child, but one who is losing his innocence ahead of his time.