Jumble: Books from around the world – Signs Preceding the End of the World

 

 

Signs Preceding the End of the World is a book like no other you will read this year. At a modest one hundred or so pages, it’s easily devoured in one sitting, but it will take up more space in your mind than a novel twice its length as it unfolds within you like an origami crane. The story of a young Mexican woman, Makina, who must traverse the border smuggling a message to her estranged brother is told in language that is at once beautiful and jarring. Lisa Dillman’s translation of Yuri Herrera’s original Spanish is a work of art in its own right, paradoxically dissociating and engaging the reader in equal measure. Her prose is a testament to her faithfulness to the rhythm of Mexican colloquialisms and the particularities of Herrera’s neologisms. Her version highlights the main theme of the novel: the act of translating and crossing between two diametrically opposed cultures. Such multifaceted work is shaped by a panoply of diverse literary traditions. A novel that builds terrifying subterranean spaces into the narrative alludes to Dante’s Inferno, or even a grown-up Alice in Wonderland. Makina’s “versing” from one perilously macho world to another recalls Cormac McCarthy’s apocalyptic novel, The Road. Motifs borrowed from Greek and Aztec mythology pepper the book and coalesce into one of the most formidable heroines in modern literature. Signs Preceding the End of the World has won this year’s Best Translated Book Award, the shortlist of which included Elena Ferrante’s The Story of the Lost Child. This attests to the novel’s sheer excellence. Don’t be fooled by the narrow binding. This is one of the most profound stories about crossing, cultural difference and gender I have ever read.

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