Signs Preceding the End of the World

By: Yuri Herrera

Narrated by: Patricia Rodriguez

Length: 2 hrs and 18 mins

Publisher's summary

Winner of the 2016 Best Translated Book Award.

Featured in The Guardian's 100 Best Books of the 21st Century.

Signs Preceding the End of the World is one of the most arresting novels published in Spanish in the last 10 years. Yuri Herrera does not simply write about the border between Mexico and the United States and those who cross it. He explores the crossings and translations people make in their minds and language as they move from one country to another, especially when there's no going back.

Traversing this lonely territory is Makina, a young woman who knows only too well how to survive in a violent, macho world. Leaving behind her life in Mexico to search for her brother, she is smuggled into the USA carrying a pair of secret messages - one from her mother and one from the Mexican underworld.

©2015 Lisa Dillman (P)2020 Hodder & Stoughton Ltd

boring

this book didn't do much to build the suspense and keep me interested. I can appreciate the writing the Author is doing, but it doesn't set much of a visual picture which is necessary with an audio book. overall just underwhelming.

Truly excellent, well red!

A great book. Very much enjoyed. Translator compares it to The Road. Which is quite apt.

Beautiful novel

I recently versed into Baja and on the way back it took 7.5 hours at the border and there was all this activity and it gave me and my girlfriend a lot of time to think about borders, their function, and how they're used as features of control and fear. My gf had read this book and was telling me I need to read it while the experience was still fresh. I loved this book so much, the allegory of crossing Styx into hell (America) and how if you're not careful, you can lose your soul along the way. The ache of a time when family meant everything. The search for something more, the dream of something vague and nameless. The characters are indelible for such a short novel. It only takes a couple hours to read, but it'll stick with you long after you've finished the book.

great performance

I really enjoyed the performance. Just excellent! I was not at all bothered by the unorthodox use of language. In fact its clear to me it's essential for what the author is trying to express in Spanish. As an Arabic speaker i was fascinated by the use of Verse, the gloss of the Spanish word originally from Arabic hijra, a word itself full of meaning and difficult to translate.

Re-versed ????

While the story is wonderfully compelling and well told, my wife did not enjoy the reader’s voice which, however, did not bother me. But I was totally irritated, even incensed, by the reader’s repeated use of the word “versed” to mean ‘to leave, or to depart or to emerge or to cross, as in walking”-perhaps indicting the translator, who seems to be on a campaign to introduce English language users to the translator’s preferred use of the word “verse”-though I could not find that application in any on-line source (dictionaries) I checked. If Audible decides to use a translation with obscure (my polite term) applications of otherwise common words, then you should WARN your readers of that fact before we buy the book. I would not knowingly have bought a translation which made such a broad and truly odd use of the common English word “verse”.

worst narrator possible

I've wanted to read this book for a long time, but this narrator is unbearable. Just impossible to listen to in general and a particularly awful choice for this novel. Terrible. Completely ruins the book..

glad I'm done

Had to read for a college class. Two hours of my day wasted. Glad it is over