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    Signs Preceding the End of the World
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    Signs Preceding the End of the World
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    Signs Preceding the End of the World
    Ebook101 pages1 hour

    Signs Preceding the End of the World

    By Yuri Herrera

    4/5

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    Currently unavailable

    Currently unavailable

    About this ebook

    Signs Preceding the End of the World is one of the most arresting novels to be published in Spanish in the last ten years. Yuri Herrera does not simply write about the border between Mexico and the United States and those who cross it. He explores the crossings and translations people make in their minds and language as they move from one country to another, especially when there’s no going back. Traversing this lonely territory is Makina, a young woman who knows only too well how to survive in a violent, macho world. Leaving behind her life in Mexico to search for her brother, she is smuggled into the USA carrying a pair of secret messages - one from her mother and one from the Mexican underworld.
    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherAnd Other Stories
    Release dateMar 3, 2015
    ISBN9781908276438
    Unavailable
    Signs Preceding the End of the World

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    Reviews for Signs Preceding the End of the World

    4/5

    202 ratings16 reviews

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    • 4/5
      A very short novel -- possibly actually a novella -- from Mexico, about a young woman who illegally crosses the border into the United States to search for her brother.It's an odd, odd book, and I doubt I understood it entirely or remotely got everything out of it that might have been there to get. But it's weirdly compelling, dark and dreamlike with strange poetic writing that really pulls you along (even if there are one or two particular linguistic quirks that I think probably didn't translate all that well from the Spanish). It's the sort of writing that I suspect would, for all its skill, have gotten tiring if it had gone on much longer, but for something this short, it worked extremely well.
    • 5/5
      This short story was so engaging that I could not put it down an read it twice in one sitting.
    • 3/5
      The streetwise Makina has been asked by her mother to cross the porous Mexican border into the States, and to find and bring back her brother. He has been lured there by a long absent father and the hopes that America offers. Up until now she has been the local switchboard operator on the only local phone for mile, and speaks Amerindian, Spanish and English, the conduit between those still there and those that have left. Now she is a messenger again, carrying a plea from her mother and a suspicious package from a member of the criminal underworld.

      It is an event-laden trip, as she copes with thugs and harassment, fording rivers and border police. But it is a journey of discovery too as she sees the abundance of things in America as she seeks her brother.

      It is a short book, espresso like in its intensity. Dramatic too, as Makina crosses the border illegally moving from place to place one step ahead of the law, and is disorientated by the changes. Good translation as well, as they have picked up the quality and brevity of the prose in the original text.
    • 5/5
      A fabulous read. Great story, brilliantly translated.
    • 5/5
      A short but powerful and poetic novella. The story tells of a young Mexican woman Makina, who travels across the border illegally in search of her brother. In order to do this she has to deal with various criminal gangs. This is just the start, and she meets a number of challenges, and remains a feisty but sympathetic heroine. As such she represents various universal truths of the migrant experience and exposes the hypocrisy of the hosts who denigrate and harass them while benefiting from their labour.The book must have been a difficult challenge for the translator, so much so that she felt she had to explain some of her decisions in an afterword. In particular Herrera uses a mixture of slang and allusive poetic descriptions, and uses certain words in strange ways. In order to replicate this, the words used in the translation often seem very strange, particularly to a non-American ear, but the overall effect is powerful and the ending is moving.
    • 4/5
      An excellent if challenging book that begs to be discussed in a group. Some images are clear, others are ambiguous (as are many things in life). Great book to read; likely even better to discuss
    • 4/5
      This was a fascinating book, made up of 9 short chapters describing an illegal crossing of the Mexico-US border and a search for a relative already living in the US, but really much more than that.I read it directly after Juan Rulfo’s Pedro Paramo, the great Mexican ur-Novel, and it bears the comparison well.
    • 5/5
      This was a beautiful translation of what I can only assume must be a beautiful novel. I enjoyed the freshness of the language, the care and love evident throughout the sentences, and the heart of the characters. I hope to read it again soon.
    • 5/5
      This was remarkable.It’s a story of a young woman crossing from Mexico to find her brother. That’s all you need to or should know about the plot. Beyond that I struggle to figure out what to say because it seemed more like feeling the book than reading it. Some words that I can’t quite form into linear thoughts/sentences: borders both literal and metaphoric; vernacular yet neologism; Dantean/Orphean myth; outside-looking-into-U.S.; nativism; magical realism but really???; feminist; imagery; the person who starts a journey isn’t the one who finishes it; enigmatic; two sentences and you know who that person is; mocking; fecund…That’s a lot for one hundred and twenty-something pages.If this isn’t one of my best reads of the year then, well, it’s going to be a very good year of reading!
    • 4/5
      I liked it well enough while I was reading it (and was in for a big surprise when it ended much sooner than I anticipated...O, Kindle reading), but I really appreciated the translator's discussion of the process. Great border book!
    • 4/5
      A modern re-telling of Orpheus where The US is Hades and the Rio Grande is the River Styx, separating the worlds of life and death. Beautiful and brutal.
    • 3/5
      A brief foray.
    • 5/5
      This is a rather short novel about a Mexican girl crossing the Mexico/US border illegally to find her brother and bring him back home. However, this summary doesn't do justice to the novel. There is a lot more to it, on deeper levels. To me, the story read like a poem. It was very much about atmosphere and imagination, as in a dream. Very beautiful.

      1 person found this helpful

    • 5/5
      Dreamy and hallucinatory, small and perfectly formed. In 106 pages, and 9 chapters Makina descends into either hell or at least some sort of alien underworld. Ostensibly leaving her village to cross the border to search for her lost brother, her journey becomes wider and more revelatory as each chapter milestone is crossed and as each new guide appears, to take her on the next phase of her journey. In some ways reminiscent of Ishiguro's The Unconsoled (but thankfully a lot easier to read) there is some very profound and beautiful writing (even in translation). I liked this passage in particular (Makina observes some same sex weddings) "Makina had admired the nerve of her friends who were that way inclined, compared to the tedious smugness of so-called normal marriages; she'd conveyed secret messages, lent her home for the loving that could not speak its name, lent her clothing for liberation parades. She'd witnessed other ways to love.....and now they were acting just the same. She felt slightly let down, but then said to herself what did she know? It must be, she thought, that they know other marriages, good ones, where people don't split up, where fathers don't leave, and they keep speaking to the other. That must be why they are so happy, and don't mind imitating people who've always despised them. Or maybe they just want the papers, and kind of papers, she said to herself, even if its only to fit in, maybe being different gets old after a while".Just so. A wonderful book that will stay with you for a while

      1 person found this helpful

    • 4/5
      This a book that is half poetry, half myth, and half prose - we have a girl, Makina, who sets out from her small Mexican village in search of her brother, who has been missing in America. This isn't a straight forward story - its told in terms of mythology and action happens in leaps and jumps. Its up to the reader to figure out what the metaphor is, what is happening.This is a story about illegal immigration - but its a story told from the point of view of the emigree. It doesn't follow the traditional narrative of those who illegally cross borders. Its not a book that is easy to read. It is short, but full of metaphors. I suspect it falls into that category of those who love and those who hate it. But give it a chance, and you will learn something new.

      1 person found this helpful

    • 3/5
      I enjoyed this book, and will probably read it again. It is deeper than its short length would suggest. I'll probably increase my rating when I have read it again and really thought about it.