Kingdom Cons

by Yuri Herrera, Lisa Dillman (Translator)

Overview

In the court of the King, everyone knows their place. But as the Artist wins hearts and egos with his ballads, uncomfortable truths emerge that shake the Kingdom to its core. Part surreal fable and part narco-lit romance, this prize-winning novel from Yuri Herrera questions the price of keeping your integrity in a world ruled by patronage and power.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781908276933
Publisher:	And Other Stories Publishing
Publication date:	06/08/2017
Sold by:	Bookwire
Format:	eBook
Pages:	112
File size:	1 MB

About the Author

Born in Actopan, Mexico, in 1970, Yuri Herrera studied Politics in Mexico, Creative Writing in El Paso and took his PhD in literature at Berkeley. His first novel to appear in English, Signs Preceding the End of the World, won the 2016 Best Translated Book Award after publishing to great critical acclaim in 2015, when it featured on many Best-of-Year lists, including The Guardian's Best Fiction and NBC News's Ten Great Latino Books. His second novel The Transmigration of Bodies was published in 2016 to further acclaim. He is currently teaching at the University of Tulane, in New Orleans.
Lisa Dillman teaches in the Department of Spanish and Portuguese at Emory University in Atlanta, Georgia. She has translated a number of Spanish and Latin American writers. Some of her recent translations include Rain Over Madrid and Such Small Hands by Andres Barba and Yuri Herrera's three novels.

Editorial Reviews

04/03/2017
The relationship between art and violence is at the core of Herrera’s (The Transmigration of Bodies) slim yet powerful novel about the various members of a drug-trafficking ring in an unnamed territory allegorically aligned with northern Mexico. A young man named Lobo, having become a street performer after being abandoned by his parents, impresses a local narco boss—a man known to him only as the King—while singing at a cantina, and he subsequently stumbles into a life of danger and excess that he never before could have imagined for himself. Newly ingratiated into the King’s court, Lobo, now known as “the Artist,” writes and performs ballads about the King’s accomplishments and conquests, much like a medieval courtier, while also pursuing romance with the daughter of a woman close to him. Strikingly beautiful and thematically rich passages are followed by scenes of gritty realism, as members of the court are mysteriously killed and warfare ultimately breaks out with other local factions. During his time at court, the Artist will learn lessons about love, loyalty, and how to navigate complex power structures while still remaining true to himself. The novel is a powerful and memorable meditation on the social and economic value of art in a world ruled by the pursuit of power. (June)

Publishers Weekly

• "My favorite of the new Mexican writers." John Powers, NPR Fresh Air
• "Short, suspenseful . . . outlandish and heartbreaking." John Williams, New York Times
• "Herrera packs his slim book with the sex, booze and nihilism of a better Simenon novella." Sam Sacks, Wall Street Journal
• "The Transmigration of Bodies takes the conventions of gumshoe fiction and transfers them to a charnel-house world that makes nonsense of the genre’s habitual moral opposites." Bookforum
• "Herrera’s metaphors grasp the freedom, and the alarming disorientation, of transition and translation." Maya Jaggi, The Guardian
• "Yuri Herrera’s tiny, beautiful novels each conjure myth and metaphor from a contemporary experience in a precise location, transformed by archaic-colloquial prose." Lorna Scott-Fox, Times Literary Supplement
• "Playful, prophetic, unnerving books that deserve to be read several times." Eileen Battersby, Irish Times
• "Darkly satisfying." James Lasdun, The Guardian
• "Yuri Herrera combines a dreamlike setting with vigorous style." Anthony Cummins, Times Literary Supplement

"Mesmerising & stunningly crafted, 5 stars!" Rebecca Choudhury, Waterstones Birmingham

"Razor sharp and inimitable – crafted in a way that resembles fable – Kingdom Cons is set in the wake of chaos around the border: the border between two particular countries, yes, but also between worlds, between possibilities, and between ways of seeing." John Ganiard, Literati Bookstore, Ann Arbor MI

"Yuri Herrera is a master of the literary arts. His ability to capture the mind's eye and weave an indelible image and story is uncanny. This, his third novel, might be his best yet. In Kingdom Cons, Herrera delivers a stunning example of how art can dissolve boundaries and speak truth to power." Matt Keliher, Subtext Books, St Paul, MN

"Kingdom Cons is revelatory. I think Yuri Herrera has created his own genre. The mix of high and low culture, the argot of the streets with the poetic narrative - it's something else. Mexico as a hallucination." Mark Haber, Brazos Bookstore, Houston, TX

From the Publisher