Signs Preceding the End of the World

"Yuri Herrera is Mexico's greatest novelist. "Signs Preceding the End of the World" delivers a darkly mythological vision of the US as experienced by the 'not us' that is harrowing and fierce."--Francisco Goldman, author of "Say Her Name"

"Yuri Herrera's "Signs Preceding the End of the World" is a masterpiece, a haunting and moving allegory about violence and the culture built to support and celebrate that violence. Of the writers of my generation, the one I most admire is Yuri Herrera."--Daniel Alarcon, author of "At Night We Walk in Circles"

Makina knows how to survive in a macho world. Leaving her native Mexico in search of her brother, she's smuggled into the United States bearing two secret messages--one from her mother and one from the Mexican underworld.

In this grippingly original novel Yuri Herrera explores the actual and psychological crossings and translations people make--with their feet, in their minds, and in their language as they move from one country to another, especially when there's no going back.

Born in Actopan, Mexico, in 1970, Yuri Herrera's "Signs Preceding the End of the World" is being published in a number of languages, as is "The Transmigration of Bodies," which is forthcoming in English from And Other Stories in 2015. He teaches at the Tulane University in New Orleans, Louisiana.

Translator Lisa Dillman is based in Atlanta, Georgia, where she translates Spanish, Catalan, and Latin American writers and teaches in the department of Spanish and Portuguese at Emory University.