About the Book
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.
About the Author :
Eduardo Halfon was born in Guatemala City, moved to the United States with his family 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 Marroquín. Named one of best young Latin American writers by the Hay Festival of Bogotá, he is also the recipient of the prestigious José María de Pereda Prize for the Short Novel. Although bilingual, Halfon chooses to write in Spanish and has published nine books of fiction. In 2011 he received a Guggenheim Fellowship to work on continuing the story The Polish Boxer, which is inspired by his own family history and is the first of his novels to be published in English. Halfon currently lives in Nebraska and travels frequently to Guatemala.
Daniel Hahn is the translator of Agualusa's award-winning novels Creole and The Book of Chameleons, as well as My Father's Wives.
Lisa Dillman is a translator from Spanish and Catalan and a lecturer at Emory University.
Thomas Bunstead is a writer and translator of leading Spanish-language writers, including Eduardo Halfon, Agustín Fernández Mallo, Juan José Millás, and Juan Villoro. His co-translation of Enrique Vila-Matas's A Brief History of Portable Literature was a semifinalist for the Queen Sofia Spanish Institute Translation Prize. He also writes for The Times Literary Supplement and Paris Review Daily and is an editor of the literary translation journal In Other Words. He lives in Lewes, England. Anne McLean has won the Independent Foreign Fiction Prize twice, as well as the Premio Valle Inclán. She has translated the works of Javier Cercas, Julio Cortázar, Carmen Martin Gaite, Ignacio Padilla, and Evelio Rosero.
Armando Durán has appeared in films, television, and regional theaters throughout the West Coast. For the last decade he has been a member of the resident acting company at the Oregon Shakespeare Festival. In 2009 he was named by AudioFile as Best Voice in Biography and History for his narration of Che Guevara. A native Californian, he divides his time between Los Angeles and Ashland, Oregon.
Review :
"The Polish Boxer is an enchanting, unclassifiable book of encounters, impressions, and improvisations: a book for the ages, which can be read in one sitting, and then again, and again, and again."
-- "Christopher Merrill, director of the International Writing Program at the University of Iowa and author of The Tree of the Doves "
"A book that willfully and delightfully blurs the boundaries among novel, memoir, and meditation...A key pleasure of The Polish Boxer is that of revelation...The power of The Polish Boxer is that it is always rooted in the personal. It is deeply accessible, deeply moving."
-- "Los Angeles Times "
"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."
-- "AudioFile"
"Brilliant...Opens with one of the best classroom scenes I've ever read."
-- "Shelf Awareness "
"Eduardo Halfon belongs to a new generation of Latin American writers who, from the beginning, demonstrate an impeccable mastery of their craft, without any hesitation in the use of language."
-- "Sergio Ramírez, former vice president of Nicaragua and author of Margarita, How Beautiful the Sea "
"Eduardo Halfon is a brilliant storyteller, whose gifts are displayed on every page of this beautiful, daring, and deeply humane book."
-- "Daniel Alarcón, author of Lost City Radio, named a Best Novel of the Year by the San Francisco Chronicle, Washington Post, and others "
"Eduardo Halfon's prose is delicate, precise, and as ineffable as precocious art--a lighthouse that illuminates everything."
-- "Francisco Goldman, prizewinning author of Say Her Name "
"Elegant."
-- "Marie Claire "
"Funny and revelatory...As borders, physical and mental, are crossed and redrawn, the stories Eduardo tells us and tells himself are revealed to be not just partial but also fantastical, false. The Polish boxer? There may never have been one. Yet this in no way diminishes the pleasure Halfon's myriad stories afford."
-- "New York Times Book Review"
"Halfon passionately and lyrically illustrates the significance of the journey and the beauty of true mystery. The Polish Boxer is sublime and arresting and will linger with readers who will be sure to revisit it again and again."
-- "Booklist (starred review) "
"It is not often that one encounters such a mix of personal engagement and literary passion, or pain and tenderness."
-- "Andrés Neuman, author of Traveler of the Century "
"These are the stories of life...The fictional makes the real bearable and intelligible."
-- "Publishers Weekly (boxed review) "
"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."
-- "Library Journal "
