What Goes Unsaid

From one of Mexico’s most important writers, a fictionalised memoir about three men who are driven to escape the confines of their traditional lives and roles.

In 1958, Carlos Monge McKey sneaks out of his home in the middle of the night to fake his own death. He does not return for four years.

A decade later, his son, Carlos Monge Sánchez, deserts his family too, joining a guerrilla army of Mexican revolutionaries.

Their stories are unspooled by grandson and son Emiliano, a writer, who also chooses to escape reality, by creating fictions to run away from the truth.

What Goes Unsaid is an extraordinary memoir that delves into the fractured relationships between fathers and sons, grandfathers and grandsons; that disinters the ugly notions of masculinity and machismo that all men carry with them — especially in a patriarchal culture like Mexico. It is the story of three men, who — each in his own way — flee their homes and families in an attempt to free themselves.