Description
Book SynopsisThe nomadic odyssey of Eduardo Halfon begins as he searches for his roots and information about his Polish grandfather’s imprisonment at Auschwitz
New York Times Editors’ Choice * International Latino Book Award Finalist
The Polish Boxer covers a vast landscape of human experience while enfolding a search for origins: a grandson tries to make sense of his Polish grandfather’s past and the story behind his numbered tattoo; a Serbian classical pianist longs for his forbidden heritage; a Mayan poet is torn between his studies and filial obligations; a striking young Israeli woman seeks answers in Central America; a university professor yearns for knowledge that he can’t find in books and discovers something unexpected at a Mark Twain conference. Drawn to what lies beyond the range of reason, they all reach for the beautiful and fleeting, whether through humor, music, poetry, or unspoken words. Across his encounters with each of them, the narrator—a Guatemalan literature professor and writer named Eduardo Halfon—pursues his most enigmatic subject: himself.
Mapping the geography of identity in a world scarred by a legacy of violence and exile, The Polish Boxer marks the debut of a major new Latin American voice in English.
Trade ReviewPraise for The Polish Boxer
New York Times “Editors’ Choice” selection
International Latino Book Award Finalist
“A Borgesian, post-Communist-era, comic detective noir.” —New York Review of Books
More Praise for Eduardo Halfon’s Fiction
“Halfon is a brilliant storyteller.” —Daniel Alarcón
“Halfon’s prose is as delicate, precise, and ineffable as precocious art, a lighthouse that illuminates everything.” —Francisco Goldman
“Elegant.” —Marie Claire
“Engrossing.” —NBC Latino
“Fantastic.” —NPR Alt.Latino
“Deeply accessible, deeply moving.” —Los Angeles Times
“Offer[s] surprise and revelation at every turn.” —Reader’s Digest
“One senses Kafka’s ghost, along with Bolaño’s, lingering in the shadows. . . . [Halfon’s] books, which take on such dark subjects, are so enjoyable to read.” —New York Review of Books
“[Halfon’s hero] delights in today’s risible globalism, but recognizes that what we adopt from elsewhere makes us who we are.” —New York Times Book Review
“Extraordinary. . . . Establish[es] an affinity between fiction and autobiography that unsettles generic divisions.” —World Literature Today
“Halfon is a master of lithe, haunting semi-autobiographical novels.” —Jewish Book Council
“With [Halfon’s] slender but deceptively weighty books, which are at once breezy and melancholic, bemused and bitter, he opens up worlds to readers in return.” —Kirkus Reviews
“Halfon passionately and lyrically illustrates the significance of the journey and the beauty of true mystery.” —Booklist
“[Halfon’s narrator] may be the perpetual wanderer, but his meditations are focused and absorbing.” —Library Journal
“Halfon gives voice to a lesser-known sector of the Jewish diaspora, reminding us in the process of the ways in which identity is both fluid and immutable.” —Publishers Weekly
“Part Jorge Luis Borges, part Sholom Aleichem. . . . Roaming the ashes of the old country, uncovering old horrors, Halfon becomes an archaeologist of atrocity. His work is fiction clothed as memoir. His chronicles are his mourner’s Kaddish.” —Rumpus
“Robert Bolaño once said: ‘The literature of the twenty-first century will belong to (Andrés) Neuman and to a handful of his blood brothers.’ Eduardo Halfon is among that number.” —NewPages
