Description:
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 city's 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 and Juliet, Roberto Bolaño, and Raymond Chandler, The Transmigration of Bodies is a noirish tragedy and a tribute to those bodies--loved, sanctified, lusted after, and defiled--that violent crime has touched.
Brief description:
Yuri Herrera, born in Actopan, Mexico, is an acclaimed and award-winning author. His Signs Preceding the End of the World won the Best Translated Book Award in 2016 and was included in many best books of the year lists, including the London Guardian's Best Fiction and NBC News's Ten Great Latino Books. His first novel, Kingdom Cons, won the 2004 Premio Binacional de Novela Joven and, when published in Spain won the Premio Otras Voces, Otros Ámbitos, being considered the best work of fiction published in Spain by a jury of 100 people, including editors, journalists and cultural critics. He studied politics in Mexico, creative writing in El Paso, and took his PhD in literature at Berkeley. He teaches at Tulane University in New Orleans.
Review Quotes:
"In Herrera's slim, amusing book, [he] strips Romeo & Juliet to its essence and sets it against a plague that symbolizes Mexico's recent violent history."
-- "Publishers Weekly"