"Season of the Swamp" is an interesting read, But, while I felt it was a compelling story, it didn't draw me in. The pacing is a bit slow, and the premise isn't clearly defined. As a speculative novel, it falls between fiction and nonfiction, and loses a bit of strength by working in the middle.

This novel is an extraordinary act of imagination, all the more extraordinary for how different it is from SIGNS PRECEDING THE END OF THE WORLD, which was also a 5-star read for me, and because of these two novels Yuri Herrera is an absolute must-read for me from now on. What a gift, to have read this novel. Easily one of my favorites of 2024.

Set in 19th-century New Orleans, this novella follows a brief period of exile in the life of Benito Juárez–the first indigenous president of Mexico. Filling in an eighteen-month gap in the history when Juárez lived in this bustling southern city, Herrera explores the petty crimes and brutal atrocities he might have witnessed to shape him into the leader he would become. Though filled with serious ideas and containing Herrera’s gift for blurring the real and the hallucinatory, what stood out to me the most was how incisively funny the writing is. Nothing is taken lightly, yet through humorous repetitions and clever syntactic inversions, Herrera (and his translator Lisa Dillman) create a deadpan style most closely reminiscent of Charles Portis’s True Grit.

A beautifully written book that charts a brief interlude in the life of Benito Jaurez, a man born in Oaxaca to indigenous parents who would eventually rise to become the first indigenous president in Mexican history. It follows his brief exile to New Orleans where he gathers supporters and information prior to his return to Mexico. The book doubles as a paean to the dichotomy of New Orleans, a city of decadence and filth, freedom and slavery, opportunity and crushing poverty. Herrera himself has lived in New Orleans for over a decade and much of his observations come from a place of love for this city and an acknowledgement of its dark past. As stated before, this is very much an interlude, there is no substantial resolution to any great problems, but merely a snapshot of a certain man at a certain time.

Very interesting and entertaining book of old New Orleans. There’s lots of dark and gritty action with a look at the unique make up of New Orleans with all of its unusual characteristics.

In this work of historical fiction, Yuri Herrera has recreated the time spent by Benito Juarez, the future first indigenous president of Mexico, in New Orleans. In the 1850s, Juarez, and other rebels, had been forced to leave their country and spent time thinking about home, what change they wanted in Mexico and learning/experiencing this American Southern ante bellum world. Much that he saw was new to him and makes for an interesting view for the reader. Since he was Mexican and not light skinned, Juarez had to live by the color rules of the city.

This story is gritty, sometimes fun in its pictures of cultural events, at times almost hallucinatory, and enlightening to see how he views this new city and land.

how ironic it is to be exiled by a tyrant, only to end up in a city full
of captured humans (loc 234)

And captured is what he, Juarez/Herrera calls the slaves throughout this book. He is caught up in their place-or lack of place in this city. This novel reveals a man at odds with himself, on the edge of something very different, but also exploring what this city has to show him.

I enjoyed this quite a lot and plan to seek out the other collaborations between Herrera and translator Lisa Dillman. This introduced me to a man and time I knew nothing about save for his name.

Thanks to Graywolf Press and NetGalley for an eARC of this book.

This is the second collaboration between Yuri Herrera and Lisa Dillman, his translator, that I've read, and I'm thrilled to know there are more out there. Here is an imagining of the time spent mid-19th century in New Orleans by Benito Juárez, who later served as the first indigenous President of Mexico. Imbued with his trademark beautiful prose, this deceptively slim novel brings to life NOLO in all its beauty and decadence, where sewage "flowed al fresco," and the market for slaves thrived. Also with his economy of language, he is able to convey the effects all this had upon the young Juárez. Elegiac and yet powerful.

Yuri Herrera is one of the finest working writers today, and Season of the Swamp is no exception. A fictionalized retelling of the time Benito Juarez spent in New Orleans, Herrera's sentences sing, and this novel left a lasting impression on me. Thanks to the publisher for the egalley.

In this short speculative read, Herrera's ability to transport one back to an extremely specific time and place proved to be quite impressive, to say the very least. 1850's New Orleans came to life so richly and so vividly that at times I almost felt like I was one of Benito Juárez's companions, experiencing it all right by his side.

First of all, I had no idea Benito Juarez spent any time in New Orleans in the 1850s. Second of all, I had no idea a poetic historical fiction theorized telling of his 18 month stint there could pack such a punch. I realized this book was written in Spanish about a third of the way through, and I am absolutely astounded at the translation done by Yuri Herrera’s long time collaborator, Lisa Dillman. The translation was so clever and playful and I wish I could read Spanish so I could read this in the original Spanish. Poetic but immensely readable, weird but accessible, short and sweet. I am immediately downloading the rest of Herrera’s oeuvre.

For fans Ben Lerner’s Leaving the Atocha Station, Lauren Groff when she dabbles in historical fiction, Joan Didion’s South West, swamps, delirious hazes, and perusing the nominees for the Booker Prize for Translated Literature each year.

Thank you to Greywolf Press and Netgalley for the ARC!