World Literature: Eduardo Halfon’s “Tarantula” (Guatemala) with Anderson Tepper

Photo Credit: David Herranz. Photo Courtesy: Bellevue Literary Press.

Eduardo Halfon, a recipient of the Guatemala National Prize in Literature, presents his latest book, Tarantula, translated from the Spanish by Daniel Hahn. Tarantula is a novel about individual and collective inheritance and violence; about memory, trauma, connection and estrangement. Winner of the Prix Médicis Étranger, Eduardo’s new work asks what it means to be a Jew living in the long aftermath of the twentieth century, and how the past lives on in the present.

In 1984, Eduardo and his younger brother, living in exile for several years in the United States, travel back to their native Guatemala to attend a Jewish children’s camp in a remote forest of the highland mountains. They no longer know their homeland. They barely speak the language. Their parents had insisted that they spend a few days at the camp to learn not only ways of survival in the wild, but also ways of survival in the wild for Jewish children, which, they have been told, is not the same. Upon their arrival, they are met with the promise of adventure. But early one morning, they are roused from bed and forced to play a sinister game they can’t afford to lose.

Many years later, Eduardo, now a father himself and living in Berlin, happens upon a former campmate in Paris who connects him to Samuel Blum—the counselor who kept a snake in his pocket, had what a young Eduardo took for a tarantula crawling down his arm, and offers no apologies for the camp’s disturbing methods.

You can purchase a copy of Eduardo’s book, Tarantula, at City of Asylum Bookstore.

This program will be followed by a public reception with complimentary hors d’oeuvres and drinks for all artists and attendees.

About the Author:

Eduardo Halfon is the author of The Polish Boxer, Monastery, Mourning, Canción, and Tarantula. He is the recipient of the Guatemalan National Prize in Literature, International Latino Book Award, Edward Lewis Wallant Award, and Berman Literature Prize, among many 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.

About the Moderator:

Anderson Tepper is a guest curator of PEN America’s World Voices Festival and a longstanding member of the Brooklyn Book Festival’s Literary Council and international committee. Formerly of Vanity Fair, his writing on books and authors has appeared in The New York Times, The Los Angeles Times, The Atlantic, and World Literature Today, among other publications. Anderson also serves on City of Asylum’s Advisory Board.

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