NEW ORLEANS (press release) – The Garden District Book Shop will host local author and Tulane professor Yuri Herrera on Oct. 1 to celebrate the release of his book “Season of the Swamp,” a major new novel set in nineteenth-century New Orleans.
New Orleans, 1853. A young exile named Benito Juárez disembarks at a fetid port city at the edge of a swamp. Years later, he will become the first indigenous head of state in the postcolonial Americas, but now he is as anonymous and invisible as any other migrant to the roiling and alluring city of New Orleans.
Though the historical archive is silent about the 18 months Juárez spent in New Orleans, Yuri Herrera imagines how Juárez’s time there prepared him for what was to come. With the extraordinary linguistic play and love of popular forms that have characterized all of Herrera’s fiction, Season of the Swamp is a magnificent work of speculative history, a love letter to the city of New Orleans and its polyglot culture, and a cautionary statement that informs our understanding of the world we live in.
The event is open to the public and will kick off at 6 p.m. Herrera will be joined in conversation by local writer Annell Lopez. Afterwards, he will be available to chat with guests and personalize copies of his book. The event is free but reserving your book is highly encouraged due to demand. Books can be reserved on Eventbrite.
This post was originally published on here
