by Yuri Herrera
“This is good for one thing. Get on a bus and don’t come back.”
The Artist watched the last guard leave and sensed that the swinging of the doors carved a final notch on his wall too. From here on out, no king named his months.
The morning sun’s glare knifed his eyes the second he stepped out of the cantina and his head began pounding once more.
Back at the hotel, She was sitting on the sheets, back to the light. Staring at her own motionless shadow. Lobo watched her from the halflight. Calm. A gentle rhythm about her. But also an uneasiness that traced a hint of sorrow on her lips. And what could he tell her? Not to worry, that it would all be all right? No, but how to tell her what he knew? Mentally he stammered out a few slick sentences and realized that was no way to deliver terrible news. Lobo crossed the room and stood beside her.
“Your mother is dead.”
She stared in disbelief for a second. When she realized he wasn’t lying she broke into sobs and collapsed on the bed; she covered her face with her hands and wept tears of utter solitude. Lobo stroked and stroked, as if to burnish away her pain. He could do it his whole life, soothe her daybreak. Gradually, her sobbing died down and She appeared to sleep. Then all of a sudden sat up, wiped her face and said:
“We have to go, we have to get out of here.”
They gathered their things and set out into the city. From one day to the next the seasons had changed and a dense, golden pollen floated in the air, but She walked quickly, as tho to flee the dust of younger days, as tho to avoid anything that might tie her down.
He waited as She bought the tickets. They ran to the bus and there, at the bottom of the steps, She stopped him:
“You can’t come now,” She said, “I’m not saying you should wait for me, I’m not promising anything, but you can’t come now.”
She gave him a long kiss, and then Lobo felt it but said nothing, he knew he couldn’t stop her. He let her hand slip through his and watched her go.
Pain hammered his temples but he did not curse it. It was his. If it was death, it was his. He owned every part of himself, of his words, of the city he no longer had to find, of his love, and his patience, and the determination to return to her blood, in which, like a wellspring, he’d recognized his own.
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Current & Upcoming Books
01
Juan Pablo Villalobos, Down the Rabbit Hole
translated from the Spanish by Rosalind Harvey
02
Clemens Meyer, All the Lights
translated from the German by Katy Derbyshire
03
Deborah Levy, Swimming Home
04
Iosi Havilio, Open Door
translated from the Spanish by Beth Fowler
05
Oleg Zaionchkovsky, Happiness is Possible
translated from the Russian by Andrew Bromfield
06
Carlos Gamerro, The Islands
translated from the Spanish by Ian Barnett
07
Christoph Simon, Zbinden’s Progress
translated from the German by Donal McLaughlin
08
Helen DeWitt, Lightning Rods
09
Deborah Levy, Black Vodka: ten stories
10
Oleg Pavlov, Captain of the Steppe
translated from the Russian by Ian Appleby
11
Rodrigo de Souza Leão, All Dogs are Blue
translated from the Portuguese by Zoë Perry & Stefan Tobler
12
Juan Pablo Villalobos, Quesadillas
translated from the Spanish by Rosalind Harvey
13
Iosi Havilio, Paradises
translated from the Spanish by Beth Fowler
14
Ivan Vladislavić, Double Negative
15
Benjamin Lytal, A Map of Tulsa
16
Ivan Vladislavić, The Restless Supermarket
17
Elvira Dones, Sworn Virgin
translated from the Italian by Clarissa Botsford
18
Oleg Pavlov, The Matiushin Case
translated from the Russian by Andrew Bromfield
19
Paulo Scott, Nowhere People
translated from the Portuguese by Daniel Hahn
20
Deborah Levy, An Amorous Discourse in the Suburbs of Hell
21
Juan Tomás Ávila Laurel, By Night the Mountain Burns
translated from the Spanish by Jethro Soutar
22
SJ Naudé, The Alphabet of Birds
translated from the Afrikaans by the author
23
Niyati Keni, Esperanza Street
24
Yuri Herrera, Signs Preceding the End of the World
translated from the Spanish by Lisa Dillman
25
Carlos Gamerro, The Adventure of the Busts of Eva Perón
translated from the Spanish by Ian Barnett
26
Anne Cuneo, Tregian’s Ground
translated from the French by Roland Glasser and Louise Rogers Lalaurie
27
Angela Readman, Don’t Try This at Home
28
Ivan Vladislavić, 101 Detectives
29
Oleg Pavlov, Requiem for a Soldier
translated from the Russian by Anna Gunin
30
Haroldo Conti, Southeaster
translated from the Spanish by Jon Lindsay Miles
31
Ivan Vladislavić, The Folly
32
Susana Moreira Marques, Now and at the Hour of Our Death
translated from the Portuguese by Julia Sanches
33
Lina Wolff, Bret Easton Ellis and the Other Dogs
translated from the Swedish by Frank Perry
34
Anakana Schofield, Martin John
35
Joanna Walsh, Vertigo
36
Wolfgang Bauer, Crossing the Sea
translated from the German by Sarah Pybus
with photographs by Stanislav Krupař
37
Various, Lunatics, Lovers and Poets:
Twelve Stories after Cervantes and Shakespeare
> 38
Yuri Herrera, The Transmigration of Bodies
translated from the Spanish by Lisa Dillman
39
César Aira, The Seamstress and the Wind
translated from the Spanish by Rosalie Knecht
40
Juan Pablo Villalobos, I’ll Sell You a Dog
translated from the Spanish by Rosalind Harvey
41
Enrique Vila-Matas, Vampire in Love
translated from the Spanish by Margaret Jull Costa
42
Emmanuelle Pagano, Trysting
translated from the French by Jennifer Higgins and Sophie Lewis
43
Arno Geiger, The Old King in His Exile
translated from the German by Stefan Tobler
44
Michelle Tea, Black Wave
45
César Aira, The Little Buddhist Monk
Translated from the Spanish by Nick Caistor
46
César Aira, The Proof
Translated from the Spanish by Nick Caistor
47
Patty Yumi Cottrell, Sorry to Disturb the Peace
48
Yuri Herrera, Kingdom Cons
Translated from the Spanish by Lisa Dillman
49
Fleur Jaeggy, I am the Brother of XX
Translated from the Italian by Gini Alhadeff
50
Iosi Havilio, Petite Fleur
Translated from the Spanish by Lorna Scott Fox
51
Juan Tomás Ávila Laurel, The Gurugu Pledge
Translated from the Spanish by Jethro Soutar
52
Joanna Walsh, Worlds from the Word’s End
53
César Aira, The Lime Tree
Translated from the Spanish by Chris Andrews
54
Nicola Pugliese, Malacqua
Translated from the Italian by Shaun Whiteside
55
Ann Quin, The Unmapped Country
Born in Actopan, Mexico, in 1970, YURI HERRERA studied Politics in Mexico, Creative Writing in El Paso and took his PhD in literature at Berkeley. His first novel to appear in English, Signs Preceding the End of the World, won the 2016 Best Translated Book Award after publishing to great critical acclaim in 2015, when it featured on many Best-of-Year lists, including The Guardian’s Best Fiction and NBC News’s Ten Great Latino Books. His second novel The Transmigration of Bodies was published in 2016 to further acclaim. He is currently teaching at the University of Tulane, in New Orleans.
LISA DILLMAN teaches in the Department of Spanish and Portuguese at Emory University in Atlanta, Georgia. She has translated a number of Spanish and Latin American writers. Some of her recent translations include Rain Over Madrid and Such Small Hands by Andrés Barba, and Yuri Herrera’s three novels.
