Canción
Description
From internationally celebrated Eduardo Halfon comes a new installment in his hero's nomadic odyssey as he searches for answers surrounding his grandfather's abduction
In Canción, Eduardo Halfon's eponymous wanderer is invited to a Lebanese writers' conference in Japan, where he reflects on his Jewish grandfather's multifaceted identity. To understand more about the cold, fateful day in January 1967 when his grandfather was abducted by Guatemalan guerillas, Halfon searches his childhood memories. Soon, chance encounters around the world lead to more clues about his grandfather's captors, including a butcher nicknamed "Canción" (or song). As a brutal and complex history emerges against the backdrop of the Guatemalan Civil War, Halfon finds echoes in the stories of a woman he meets in Japan whose grandfather survived the atomic bombing of Hiroshima.
Through exquisite prose and intricate storytelling, Halfon exposes the atrocities of war and the effect that silence and extreme violence have on family and identity.
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About the Author
Eduardo Halfon is the author of The Polish Boxer, Monastery, Mourning, and Canción. He is the recipient of the Guatemalan National Prize in Literature, Roger Caillois Prize, José María de Pereda Prize for the Short Novel, International Latino Book Award, and Edward Lewis Wallant Award, among other honors. A citizen of Guatemala and Spain, Halfon was born in Guatemala City, attended school in Florida and North Carolina, and has lived in Nebraska, Spain, Paris, and Berlin.
Reviews
Advance Praise for Canción
Cálamo Extraordinary Prize Winner
"Extraordinary. . . Establish[es] an affinity between fiction and autobiography that unsettles generic divisions." --World Literature Today
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
"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
