Mourning - by Eduardo Halfon (Paperback)

About the Book

A mysterious family tragedy inspires a journey across the globe, into the past, and through the tangled memories of childhood.

Book Synopsis

The nomadic odyssey of Eduardo Halfon continues as he searches for his roots through tangled childhood memories of a haunting family tragedy

International Latino Book Award Winner * Edward Lewis Wallant Award Winner

In Mourning, Eduardo Halfon's eponymous wanderer travels to Poland, Italy, the U.S., and the Guatemalan countryside in search of secrets he can barely name. He follows memory's strands back to his maternal roots in Jewish Poland and to the contradictory, forbidden stories of his father's Lebanese-Jewish immigrant family, specifically surrounding the long-ago childhood death by drowning of his uncle Salomón. But what, or who, really killed Salomón? As he goes deeper, he realizes that the truth lies buried in his own past, in the brutal Guatemala of the 1970s and his subsequent exile to the American South.

Mourning is a subtle and stirring reflection on the formative and destructive power of family mythology, silence, and loss.

Review Quotes

Praise for Mourning

International Latino Book Award Winner
Edward Lewis Wallant Award Winner
Kirkus Prize Finalist
Neustadt International Prize Finalist
Balcones Fiction Prize Finalist
PEN Translation Prize Longlist

"A feat of literary acrobatics." --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

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.