Review
The Transmigration of Bodies represents a highpoint in the genre of the novel.” Álvaro Enrigue, author of Sudden Death
The Transmigration of Bodies is a magnificent book and its author one of the few indispensable Latin American writers of our times.” Patricio Pron, author of My Fathers’ Ghost Is Climbing in the Rain
The Transmigration of Bodies takes the conventions of gumshoe fiction and transfers them to a charnel-house world that makes nonsense of the genre’s habitual moral opposites.” Bookforum
In Herrera's slim, amusing book, [he] strips Romeo & Juliet to its essence and sets it against a plague that symbolises Mexico’s recent violent history.” Publishers Weekly
Excellent neo-noir . . . One of North America's best fiction cycles continues. Like a True Detective that doesn’t suck, Transmigration is a hard-boiled fiction that wades in literary and philosophical allusion.” Flavorwire
[In The Transmigration of Bodies] Herrera turns to Mexico’s internal violence in this tragic, brilliant film gris” of contemporary fiction.” Flavorwire 10 Must Read Books for July
I absolutely adore noir, and this . . . is a fantastic entry in the genre . . . It’s slightly queer (in multiple senses of the world), insistently intense, and it lingers long after you wrap up this novella.” xojane Anti-beach Reads
I’d recommend this book for the nicknames alone . . . Every character gets one because why the hell not? What Herrera calls his characters is just one of the many details that had me falling hard for this book . . . truly original.” BookRiot
Yuri Herrera is rapidly making a name for himself as one of the most exciting authors publishing in America today. It’s impressive that Herrera can build such powerful worlds in such few words and pages . . . an excellent novella.” Pop Matters
Herrera’s brilliantly surreal turns of phrase mirror the strangeness of the world: he knows that brutal everyday truths are best revealed through dreams. Blood-soaked, driven deep and expertly written.” Jeff Noon, The Spectator
Herrera’s literary power is once again in his restraint . . . [as he] brings a frenetic energy and fresh idiomatic feel to the internal wars of the faraway nouveau riche.’ The List, four star review
Herrera’s characteristic concision goes a step further here, his skill for expression more impressive in its restraint than its excess. This is a harsh novel, as are those from a borderland besieged by extreme violence, but it’s also oddly comforting, in large part due to its exceptional literary quality.” El País
Yuri Herrera's novels are like little lights in a vast darkness. I want to see whatever he shows me.” Stephen Sparks, Green Apple Books, San Francisco, CA
This is as noir should be, written with all the grit and grime of hard-boiled crime and all the literary merit we're beginning to expect from Herrera. Before the end he'll have you asking how, in the shadow of anonymity, do you differentiate between the guilty and the innocent?” Tom Harris, Mr B’s Emporium, Bath
Both hysterical and bleak, The Transmigration of Bodies builds an entire world in 100 pages. Herrera's ability to express everything in so few words, his skill of merging the argot of the streets with the poetry of life is unrivalled. The world his characters inhabit is dangerous and urban, like a postcard sent from the ends of the earth. Reading his compact novels is both exhilarating and unforgettable.” Mark Haber, Brazos Bookstore, Houston, TX
A fabulous book full of low-life characters struggling to get by. It's an everyday story of love, lust, disease and death. Indispensable.” Matthew Geden, Waterstones Cork, Ireland
Reading The Transmigration of Bodies was akin to being enveloped in a dream state, yet one that upon waking somehow makes profound sense. Another truly magnificent novel from one of the most exciting authors to emerge on the world stage for aeons.” Ray Mattinson, Blackwell’s, Oxford
A microcosmic look at the lives of two families straight out of a Shakespearean drama. Pick it up and you won't put it down till you've finished.” Grace Waltemyer, Posman Books in Chelsea Market, NY
A work replete with the gritty, informal prose first displayed in Signs rooted firmly in the modern world yet evoking the feel of an epic divorced from time . . . a cross between Cormac McCarthy and a detective novel, an incisive portrait evoking a Mexican Inherent Vice.” Marina Clementi, Seminary Co-op Bookstore, Chicago, IL
The Transmigration of Bodies reads like a fever dream: an intense, enthralling examination of how people live in a city of the dying and the dead. It takes an extraordinary amount of skill to combine elements of noir, political commentary, hardboiled crime, and allegory (not to mention Shakespeare, with a seasoning of existential ennui) and keep the novel moving, or in this case, racing along. Herrera, clearly, has at least that much talent, and then some.” Thomas Flynn, Volumes Bookcafe, Chicago, IL
About the Author
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, was published to great critical acclaim in 2015 and included in many Best-of-Year lists, including The Guardian's Best Fiction and NBC News's Ten Great Latino Books. He is currently teaching at Tulane University 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; August, October; and Death of a Horse, by Andrés Barba, and Signs Preceding the End of the World by Yuri Herrera.
