The writer and journalist José Revueltas (1914–1976) was a lifelong political dissident. In 1968, Revueltas spent two and a half years as a prisoner in the infamous Palacio de Lecumberri, a penitentiary near Mexico City. There, in the space of weeks, Revueltas wrote The Hole, using the real prison as the setting for his novella. Revueltas was awarded both prestigious the Premio Nacional de Literatura and the Xavier Villaurrutia Literary Prize. Amanda Hopkinson is a Professor of Literary Translation at City, University of London and has translated over 40 books from Spanish, French, and Portuguese. She also writes on photography and is the author of History of Photography in Mexico (2019). Sophie Hughes has translated such Spanish-language writers as Iván Repila, Laia Jufresa, Rodrigo Hasbún, José Revueltas, Giuseppe Caputo, Enrique Vila-Matas, and Alia Trabucco Zerán. Álvaro Enrigue was born in Mexico in 1969. He is an essayist, critic, professor, and the author of several novels and short story collections. His first novel La muerte de un instalador won the 1996 Joaquín Mortiz Prize. In 2007, the “Bogotá39” project named him one of the most promising Latin American writers of his generation.

"The Hole, with its singular combination of oneiric horror and documentary realism, helped to galvanize a new cultural sensibility."