Maarten Steenmeijer, in "de Volkskrant", writes that Monge seems to proudly lean on the Latin-American tradition (in "themes, settings, and style") that Roberto Bolaño and others rejected, but without falling back into magical realism. Steenmeijer sees comparisons with two Mexican classics, Juan Rulfo's "Pedro Páramo" and Carlos Fuentes's "The Death of Artemio Cruz", but that Monge's debut is "magisterial": "Praise to the author, praise to the translators. "The Arid Sky" is a great Latin-American novel, even in Dutch". Monge's 2018 novel "Among the Lost" is a love story between two human traffickers set in the jungles and wastelands of the Mexican–US border area. "The Guardian" said "Monge balances the dour, apocalyptic brutality of Cormac McCarthy with lively, grim humour – evident in the exasperated exchanges – all of which makes the stark truths driving this flamboyant narrative a little easier to swallow". When asked in an interview with "TLS" about writing as a political act, he answered, "They are inseparable. It has nothing to do with the themes or the characters, but the language. It is inalienable. When sitting before the blank page, the only certainty that must be had is to write in a language different from the language of power. This for me is also fundamental". The novel was awarded the Elena Poniatowska Iberoamerican Novel Prize in 2016 by the Mexico City government. In 2018, Monge released "No contar todo" ("Not Telling Everything"), his first nonfiction title. The book tells three autobiographical tales, interwoven to explore the generational acculturation towards "male violence". One focuses on his grandfather, Carlos Monge Mckey, who faked his own death after blowing up a quarry owned by his brother-in-law. Another relates his family's rules for protection when home alone, as a response to the violent era of Monge's childhood. The final story is about his father, Carlos Monge Sánchez, who fought as a guerrilla soldier alongside Genaro Vázquez Rojas. "El País" described the book as "a journey through the torments of a country—already overdiagnosed in multiple essays—but that cries out for the humanization of its daily realities".