The main character in The Polish Boxer is named Eduardo Halfon, a Guatemalan writer and literature professor not unlike the book’s author, with the same name and biography. Thus right away, we’re in the murky half-light where fiction meets memoir meets memory and the impossibility thereof. It’s interesting territory, but it’s not immediately clear what that slippage does to enhance the loose skein of past and present events that befall Eduardo. What it does do is provide a built-in explanation for the lack of tidiness: these are the stories of life, not those of the more manufactured fictional version, the book suggests. Whether the stories are true is beside the point: they’re interesting in their own right. Eduardo suffers the bored contempt of his students; discovers the Mayan world that makes up the other Guatemala; finally learns the story of how his grandfather survived Auschwitz; and in the longest section, meets a traveling half-Serbian, half-Gypsy musician and then goes to Serbia to try to track him down. At the end, when his grandfather, the canny or lucky survivor, dies, and Halfon delivers a talk on how “literature tears through reality,” we come meandering back to the questions that, as we now understand, animate this book: the question of survival (of both people and cultures) and the way the fictional makes the real bearable and intelligible, if not always neat. Agent: Andrea Montejo, the Indent Literary Agency. (Oct.)
The Polish Boxer
Narrated by Armando Duran
Eduardo HalfonUnabridged — 6 hours, 12 minutes
The Polish Boxer
Narrated by Armando Duran
Eduardo HalfonUnabridged — 6 hours, 12 minutes
Overview
The Polish Boxer covers a vast landscape of human experience while enfolding a search for origins: a grandson tries to make sense of his 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.
Editorial Reviews
Praise 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
This ten-chapter work by a Guatemalan author now living in Nebraska defies classification. At first glance, it is an episodic, loosely arranged novel whose chapters are often autonomous, conveying the feel of several short stories tied together. But it also smacks of autobiography, as the protagonist shares the author's name. The plot concerns a Jewish Guatemalan literature professor who, after hearing a performance by a gifted Serbian pianist, feels compelled to travel to Serbia to visit him. Tacked on almost as an appendix is an account of the death of the author's grandfather, who was saved in Auschwitz by a Polish boxer, and this adds a provocative twist to the ending. The descriptions of the academic environment and the Serbian gypsy camp are vivid, based as they seem to be on real experiences. VERDICT This first English translation of Halfon's work is highly readable and engaging, partly owing to the careful work by a team of five translators; on an aesthetic note, its disruption of genre categories provides readers food for thought about the nature of literary creations.—Lawrence Olszewski, OCLC Lib., Dublin, OH
Native Guatemalan Halfon transcends the short story genre with a collection that maps the geography of his own identity. Lyrical, yet grounded by prosaic dialogue, the stories trace the literature professor and writer's journey of chance encounters that just happen to grow his spirit. Armando Duran shows admirable restraint in his performance of the diverse works. His perfect American accent sharply contrasts with his elegant Spanish pronunciation of names and phrases. Duran sensitively balances Halfon's dual messages of melancholy and wonder with a vocal wit that blurs the realms between memoir and fiction. Always curious, Halfon's autobiographical protagonist continually questions the "inner revolutions" of those around him to make sense of the mysteries of the past and the shifting world of the present. A.W. Winner of AudioFile Earphones Award © AudioFile 2013, Portland, Maine
Product Details
| BN ID: | 2940169803426 |
|---|---|
| Publisher: | Blackstone Audio, Inc. |
| Publication date: | 11/07/2012 |
| Edition description: | Unabridged |
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