Breakfast Talk: YURI HERRERA

Friday 12th May at 10:00–11:00

Meet Mexican author Yuri Herrera, author of the critically acclaimed Signs Preceding the End of the World, The Transmigration of Bodies and the just released Kingdom Cons.

When his novel Signs Preceding the End of the World was translated and published in English, it was a revelation, a hundred-page literary detonation, winning the Best Translated Book Award over the likes of Elena Ferrante and Karl Ove Knausgaard and putting Herrera on the Anglophone map.

With the publication of his second novel in English, The Transmigration of Bodies, the broader outline of Herrera’s project is coming into view, a “border trilogy” united by a singular aesthetic philosophy, an exploration of the vertiginous depths underneath and between and around the worlds we thought we knew. Borders seem like walls until you get close enough to see: they are bodies.

His third novel in English, Kingdom Cons, has just been released.

Advance tickets 60:- (includes coffee/tea and a light breakfast) are also available at the bookshop.

Signs Preceding the End of the World – a lyrical Mexican migrants’ tale

‘[T]his marvellously rich, slim novel is working on many levels . . . Herrera’s great achievement lies in elevating the harsh epic of “crossing” to the “other side” to soaring myth. There are allusions to Odysseus, Orpheus and the Styx, the river of Greek mythology that was a border to the Underworld; as well as Mesoamerican stories of shapeshifting and rebirth . . . Herrera’s metaphors grasp the freedom, and the alarming disorientation, of transition and translation . . . Translator Lisa Dillman has found a language both blunt and lyrical for Herrera’s many neologisms.’

– Maya Jaggi, The Guardian on Signs Preceding the End of the World

The Transmigration of Bodies – a post-apocalyptic noir

‘Bracingly unbookish . . . The after-effect is more like that of a video game or Marvel comic, with both the brightness and unabashed flatness those entail. Darkly satisfying . . . Swift, slick images and one-liners glitter at regular intervals.’

– James Lasdun, The Guardian on The Transmigration of Bodies

Kingdom Cons

‘A powerful and memorable meditation on the social and economic value of art in a world ruled by the pursuit of power.’

– Publishers Weekly on Kingdom Cons

The English Bookshop • Södermannagatan 22, Stockholm
stockholm@bookshop.se • 08-790 55 10 • www.bookshop.se