Every street corner in Juarez harbors the story of a murder

A masked wrestler’s persona begins to take over his life in this short story by Yuri Herrera, translated by 2024 Cercador Prize winner Thomas Bunstead.

“Asako, how do you like this dream?” she asked, not turning her head from the hole.

What he’d mistaken for a white dog was staring at him with red eyes.

I put my cigarette out on a hand that held an empty briefcase of shiny leather.

Under her feet, the boat was shaking and creaking as bigger, stronger waves were beginning to hit it.

“Villoro always cuts through genres with the precision of a scalpel.”—Javier Marías

I wanted the daughter who quit doing drugs cold turkey, at age ten.

Crates of poultry are piling up in my yard, my attic’s an aviary, my cellar writhes with reptiles

She finds my writing bizarre; no one does it, especially not in a town like this.

I burned down the McDonald’s, for the sake of my life

Curiously, in recent years God became the most outspoken critic of his own work

The plan involved gradually rewriting Don Quixote over the years, so that no one would notice and collective memories would forget the details. Implausible?

Before he could reach for his abacus to add up the total, Tooba Khanum opened the folds of her chador to produce a rooster.

When the Bolsheviks took over, Tsar Nicholas summoned my father.

But remember, the cornstalks are so gigantic you'll need the help of seasoned Goblin lumberjacks.

I began the laborious ascent of the loaf.

It wasn’t an accident that her head was not attached to her body.

Right at the peak of the afternoon heat, a bus strolled into the local general store.

It's a General Map of Man with a special interpretation.

During the red and yellow storms I even went out and watched the landscape changing color.

Whenever she'd finish a city or an island, she would lift it in the air.

There are no words to express it in the language of men who die only once. 

On the evening of the tenth day of the seventh lunar month, we “invited” all the ancestors to our home.

He throws the arm with the machete around my shoulders, the edge of the blade scant centimeters from my neck.

Now that I no longer see, I see no better use of my presence in this world than to look out the window.

I still tremble from the child's furtive attention.

Nor did the female members of that tiny minority of your loyal following escape your sleazy attentions.

One of the dogs goes for him as if there were nothing between them to block its way.

There was, for example, his fascinating report of how he trained a wolf pup while hiding out as a partisan in the woods near Minsk.

I told myself that here, sitting right across from me, was a real murderer, even if he had only murdered Bonnie.

Strindberg had ended up after death here, in a branch of IKEA in Iceland.

Once there was a town where no two people spoke the same language.

Sulphur–pyrite–opal / and jasper–dear friends!

He’ll eat anything except people and foxes.

I'll possibly throw myself onto the pyre.

She very much enjoyed being made love to by her husband in a bed that had belonged to another woman.

I was the one who killed Borges.

If I was a cactus, what kind of plant was Midori?

“Come now, Hemingway,” she teased, “you really don’t know this gentleman’s stories?”

If he and I had been able to exchange space and time, he might well have become “Trout Fishing in America.”

He recommended Valium and a trip to London.

And you need to promise me one thing: don’t let them give me any injections.

He gave me a very serious look and said there would not be any more murders.

The jinn began shaking Rafa'a's body like a leaf.

The assailant had pulled the niqab from her face during the struggle.

I spent all the funds my mother sent and returned to Riyadh at the end of vacation having slept with the woman fifteen times.

You won’t believe me when I tell you that I am meeting my son for the first time.

When Hannan was within a few steps of her house, she saw everything.

You delivered the spark, your task is done, the task is ours now to finish.

When the massacres began in 1990 we had our doors bullet-proofed.

Some visitors responded to the waves of the leaders of yesteryear by giving them the finger.

And she tells the story of how he came and took her away on his horse and shut her up in a house with high walls.

I felt the arrogance with which one regards the dispossessed.

Some texts I compose naked in a closed room with the drapes drawn and not a breath of air.

I opened my body to this crazy story, to this great love, the greatest and strongest that I’ve ever known.

That was me once, soaking wet in the rain, one fall long ago; that was me taking a beating from some fat, greasy, gray-haired guy,

What hurts me in all this is that my parents will be forced to bury me before themselves.

The men stirred, restless. Romans, they wanted blood. The whip, the boot, the snap.

What type did he prefer, Orlando Bloom or Benicio del Toro?