Season of the Swamp
Yuri Herrera
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From the publisher
Translated by Lisa Dillman
In 1853, a man named Benito Juárez disembarks at the fetid port of New Orleans. Later, in 1858, he is to become the first indigenous president of Mexico, but now he is anonymous. He falls in love with the music and food, but unavoidable, too, is the trade in human beings. A magnificent work of speculative history and a love letter to New Orleans.
A major new novel set in nineteenth-century New Orleans by the author of Signs Preceding the End of the World
New Orleans, 1853. A young Zapotec man named Benito Juárez disembarks at a fetid port city at the edge of a swamp along with a small group of fellow political exiles from Mexico. Later, in 1858, he is to become the first indigenous Mexican president, but now he is as anonymous and invisible as any other migrant to the roiling and alluring city. He falls in love with the music and food, but unavoidable, too, is the trade in human beings.
A magnificent work of speculative history and a love letter to New Orleans.
‘One of the most original and prodigiously gifted writers at work today.‘ Katie Kitamura
‘This work of speculative fiction takes up a centuries-old mystery involving a young Benito Juárez, who was Mexico’s first Indigenous president, and his relatively unknown 18-month exile in New Orleans. Herrera imagines a colourful life during a turbulent time in a culturally radiant city at the edge of a swamp.’ Wilson Wong, New York Times
‘Virtuosic. . . . The Juárez that Herrera conjures with his muscular prose – translated with bravura by Lisa Dillman . . . is above all a pair of eyes and ears. He’s an observer alive to the world, endowed with the foreigner’s curiosity and the subaltern’s ironic scepticism.’ Nicolás Medina Mora, New York Times Book Review