Migratory Birds, Paperback

Pondering revolutionary Cuba, the Berlin Wall, and the caves of Cappadocia, these essays explore themes of memory, war, movement, and home.--The New Yorker

A thoughtful, roving meditation on migration, language, and home.--Publishers Weekly

In her prize-winning debut, Mexican essayist Mariana Oliver trains her gaze on migration in its many forms, moving between real cities and other more inaccessible territories: language, memory, pain, desire, and the body. With an abiding curiosity and poetic ease, Oliver leads us through the underground city of Cappadocia, explores the vicissitudes of a Berlin marked by historical fracture, recalls a shocking childhood exodus, and recreates the intimacy of the spaces we inhabit. Blending criticism, reportage, and a travel writing all her own, Oliver presents a brilliant collection of essays that asks us what it means to leave the familiar behind and make the unfamiliar our own.

About author(s):

Mariana Oliver was born in Mexico City in 1986. She received her master's in comparative literature from the Universidad Nacional Autónoma de México (UNAM) and is the recipient of a Fundacíon de Letras Mexicanas grant for essay writing. In 2016, she was awarded the José Vasconcelos National Essay Prize for Migratory Birds.

Julia Sanches is a translator of Portuguese, Spanish, French, and Catalan. Her book-length translations are Now and at the Hour of Our Death by Susana Moreira Marques and What Are the Blind Men Dreaming? by Noemi Jaffe. A former literary agent, she is cofounder of the collective Cedilla & Co.