Herrera, Yuri
Entry updated 21 August 2023. Tagged: Author.
(1970- ) Mexican political scientist, academic and author, whose first novel, Trabajos del reino (2004; trans Lisa Dillman as Kingdom Cons 2017), unfolds an abstracted crime tale in a moderately surrealized version of the Mexican border city of Ciudad Juárez, a venue earlier transfigured by Roberto Bolaño into the Santa Teresa of 2666 (2004). His third novel, La transmigración de los cuerpos (2013; trans Lisa Dillman as The Transmigration of Bodies 2016), set in the heart of an unnamed Mexican city in the grips of a Pandemic, unpacks another crime story, like the first told with a pantomimic abstractness, most of the characters being identified solely through name-tags reminiscent of the Commedia dell'Arte.
Herrera comes closest to explicit sf narratives in the stories assembled as Diez planetas (coll 2019; trans Lisa Dillman as Ten Planets 2023), where he subjects the SF Megatext, as previously apophthegmatically interrogated by authors like Jorge Luis Borges, Italo Calvino or Stanisław Lem, to further twists and exposures, sometimes fabulistic, sometimes redolent of the Genre SF of an earlier age. In several of these tales, the End of the World, though never mentioned as such, looms. [JC]
Yuri Herrera-Gutiérrez
born Actopan, Hidalgo, Mexico: 1970
works (selected)
- Trabajos del reino (Madrid, Spain: Editorial Periférica, 2004) [binding unknown.]
- Kingdom Cons (London: Faber and Faber, 2012) [trans by Lisa Dillman of the above: pb/]
- Señales que precederán al fin del mundo (, 2013) [binding unknown/]
- Signs Preceding the End of the World (Sheffield, England: And Other Stories, 2015) [trans by Lisa Dillman of the above: pb/]
- La transmigración de los cuerpos (Madrid, Spain: Editorial Periférica, 2013) [pb/]
- The Transmigration of Bodies (Sheffield, England: And Other Stories, 2016) [trans by Lisa Dillman of the above: pb/]
- Three Novels: Kingdom Cons, Signs Preceding the End of the World, The Transmigration of Bodies (Sheffield, England: And Other Stories, 2021) [omni of the above three translations: pb/]
- The Transmigration of Bodies (Sheffield, England: And Other Stories, 2016) [trans by Lisa Dillman of the above: pb/]
- El incendio de la mina El Bordo (Madrid, Spain: Editorial Periférica, 2018) [binding unknown/]
- A Silent Fury: The El Bordo Mine Fire (Sheffield, England: And Other Stories, 2020) [trans by Lisa Dillman of the above: pb/]
collections and stories
- Talud ["The Slope"] (Mexico City, Mexico: Literal Publishing, 2016) [coll: binding unknown/]
- Diez planetas (Madrid, Spain: Editorial Periférica, 2019) [coll: binding unknown/]
- Ten Planets: Stories (Sheffield, England: And Other Stories, 2023) [coll: trans by Lisa Dillman of the above: pb/Carlos Esparza]
links
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