The Transmigration of Bodies
Yuri Herrera, Lisa Dillman (translation)
A plague has brought death to the city. Two feuding crime families with blood on their hands need our hard-boiled hero, The Redeemer, to broker peace. Both his instincts and the vacant streets warn him to stay indoors, but The Redeemer ventures out into the underbelly to arrange for the exchange of the bodies they hold hostage.
Yuri Herrera’s novel is a response to the violence of contemporary Mexico. With echoes of Romeo & Juliet, Roberto Bolaño & Raymond Chandler, The Transmigration of Bodies is a noirish tragedy & a tribute to those bodies – loved, sanctified, lusted after, & defiled – that violent crime has touched.
Yuri Herrera was born in Actopan, Mexico, in 1970. His English-language debut Signs Preceding the End of the World was published in 2015 to great acclaim. He teaches at the University of Tulane, New Orleans. Herrera is the author of three novels, including Signs Preceding the End of the World, which was one of the Guardian's “100 Best Books of the 21st Century” & won the Best Translated Book Award. He teaches at Tulane University in New Orleans.
Lisa Dillman teaches in the Department of Spanish & Portuguese at Emory University & has translated numerous works of fiction by Argentine, Mexican, Catalan, & Spanish writers. She lives in Decatur, Georgia.