Mourning

Praise for Mourning

Library Journal Top Work in Translation selection

Words Without Borders Watchlist selection

Jewish Week Spring Arts Preview selection

Elegant and meditative. --Words Without Borders

Brimming with subtle mystery, inquisitiveness, oddity, coincidence, and melancholy. . . . A highly entertaining tragedy, a fascinating page-turner. --Asymptote Journal

A careful, precise story that explores the many facets of loss and healing. --World Literature Today

With his slender but deceptively weighty books, which are at once breezy and melancholic, bemused and bitter, [Halfon] opens up worlds to readers in return. --Kirkus Reviews (starred review)

An unforgettable exploration of one family's fluid, collective memory. --Booklist

Halfon spins a bewitching tale. . . . Careful, arresting prose brings everything together in a moving, evocative story of the narrator's bloodline. --Publishers Weekly

[Halfon] clarif[ies] in fluid, accessible language that however slippery, memory is essential to who we are. --Library Journal

Halfon's writing hits a virtual ecstasy. --Jonas Mekas, director of As I Was Moving Ahead Occasionally I Saw Brief Glimpses of Beauty at Electric Literature

More Praise for Eduardo Halfon, Monastery, and The Polish Boxer

Eduardo Halfon is a brilliant storyteller. --Daniel Alarc n, author of Lost City Radio and The King Is Always Above the People

Halfon's prose is as delicate, precise, and ineffable as precocious art, a lighthouse that illuminates everything. --Francisco Goldman, author of Say Her Name and The Interior Circuit

It is not often that one encounters such a mix of personal engagement and literary passion, or pain and tenderness. --Andr s Neuman, author of Traveler of the Century and How to Travel Without Seeing

Halfon passionately and lyrically illustrates the significance of the journey and the beauty of true mystery. --Booklist

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

A rising star among Latin writers, Halfon is a lively traveling companion. --Kirkus Reviews

On Monastery

A moving, reflective, and humbly resounding work of fiction. . . . As an ambassador of both worldly wonder and sublime storytelling, Eduardo Halfon's Monastery, despite its brevity, is truly a marvel. --Best Translated Book Award Longlist citation

[The protagonist] may be the perpetual wanderer, but his meditations are focused and absorbing. --Library Journal Indie Fiction in Translation of the Year citation

Offer[s] surprise and revelation at every turn --Reader's Digest

Intelligent and authentic. --Jewish Book Council

Monastery, which looks at Guatemala and the world from the divided perspective of a Jew and Guatemalan, [displays] a constantly surprising sensitivity, even tenderness toward both worlds and the ways they resonate even when they appear deaf to each other. . . . In the admirable translation by Lisa Dillman and Daniel Hahn, the idiomatic, contemporary American English voice comes across as innate to this cosmopolitan narrator, without losing all its Spanishness. --The Common

On The Polish Boxer

The hero of Halfon's novel delights in today's risible globalism, but recognizes that what we adopt from elsewhere makes us who we are. --New York Times (Editors' Choice)

Engrossing. --NBC Latino

Fantastic. --NPR Alt.Latino

Elegant. --Marie Claire

Deeply accessible, deeply moving. --Los Angeles Times

Tight and lean . . . falling somewhere between the novels of Roberto Bola o, WG Sebald, and Junot D az. --Telegraph

[Halfon] has succeeded in warping a modern Balkan mystery into a Holocaust memoir . . . intrinsically blend[ing] fiction with reality in a deeply visceral way. --Rumpus

The most memorable new novel I have read all year, the voice pitch-perfect, the imagery indelible. What a wonderful writer. --Norman Lebrecht, author of The Song of Names and Why Mahler?

Eduardo Halfon was born in Guatemala City, moved to the United States at the age of ten, went to school in South Florida, studied industrial engineering at North Carolina State University, and then returned to Guatemala to teach literature for eight years at Universidad Francisco Marroqu n. Named one of the best young Latin American writers by the Hay Festival of Bogot , he is also the recipient of a Guggenheim Fellowship, Roger Caillois Prize, and Jos Mar a de Pereda Prize for the Short Novel. He is the author of fourteen books published in Spanish and three novels published in English: The Polish Boxer, a New York Times Editor's Choice selection and finalist for the International Latino Book Award; Monastery, longlisted for the Best Translated Book Award; and Mourning, forthcoming from Bellevue Literary Press in May 2018. Halfon currently lives in Nebraska and frequently travels to Guatemala.

Lisa Dillman translates from Spanish and teaches in the Department of Spanish and Portuguese at Emory University in Atlanta, Georgia. She has translated numerous books by Spanish and Latin American writers including Andr s Barba, Christopher Dom nguez Michael, Sabina Berman, and Yuri Herrera. Her translation of Herrera's Signs Preceding the End of the World received the Best Translated Book Award.

Daniel Hahn is a writer, editor, and translator with some fifty books to his name. His translations from Portuguese, Spanish, and French include fiction from Europe, Africa, and the Americas and nonfiction by writers ranging from Portuguese Nobel laureate Jos Saramago to Brazilian footballer Pel . He is also the editor of the new Oxford Companion to Children's Literature. He lives in Lewes, England.