Who do you trust when you choose a book to read? Many of us pay attention to the recommendations of friends, acquaintances and family who have similar tastes to ours. Many others, go to the bookstores and, either choose the work that enters the eyes (and for the synopsis of the back cover) or ask for advice from their trusted bookseller. Others get carried away by the list of best -selling, trusting that the general public has good literary criteria. And then there are those who let themselves be advised by literary critics, who always point to a bodybuilding point of recommendations and reviews.
If you trust the opinion of literary critics, you are already taking to read ‘Tarantula’ (Books of the Asteroid), the latest novel by Guatemalan Eduardo Halfon, who has just been awarded with the 2024 Critics Award 2024 In the Castilian language in the category of narrative, a recognition that he grants annually, since 1956, the Spanish Association of Literary Critics (AECL).
Of ‘Tarantula’, a book of alone 184 pages That it went on sale in June last year, the jury emphasizes that it is “a splendid and overwhelming novel in its aesthetic and ethical dimension.” It also highlights “the mastery of the composition” of Halfon, which seems to make the most complicated writing simple, and also “its human depth and his elegant, sober and lucid style, that intelligently dodges any Manichaeism -without avoiding positioning itself.
Asteroid books ‘Tarantula’
Eduardo Halfon is composing with each of his books a huge joint novel, one of the most relevant literary projects of current Hispanic American letters. ‘Tarantula’, Winner of the 2024 Medicis Award for the best foreign novel in France and finalist of the Finestres and All Truslibros Awards, dive in the childhood of the writer in the complex and violent Guatemala of the armed conflict to reflect on the legacy of violence and the power of the word.
In ‘Tarantula’, the author evokes an episode of his past whose true meaning only begins to reveal himself decades later, through unexpected reunions in Paris and Berlin with some of the enigmatic characters that were part of that experience. The novel tells the story of Two Guatemalan brothers who, after years of exile in the United States, return to Guatemala at the end of 1984 to attend a Jewish children camp, located in a remote forest of the Altiplano.
Eduardo Halfon.
The brothers, who barely retain the Spanish language and have little link with their homeland, have been sent by their parents with the promise that there will learn survival techniques, not only in nature, but specifically thought for Jewish children, something that – they warn them – is not the same. However, What seemed like a formative experience becomes a disturbing situation when, one morning, children discover that the camp has changed radically.
From that moment on, coexistence becomes a silent and disconcerting struggle to survive, facing challenges that will test their innocence, identity and ability to adapt to a reality that they never imagined. The book is currently valued with 3.92 in Goodreads.
Eduardo Halfon, born in 1971 in Guatemala, is an outstanding writer whose work has been translated into more than fifteen languages. He has published numerous novels, including ‘The Polish Boxer’, ‘Monastery’, ‘Duel’, ‘Song’ and ‘Tarantula’, many of them with asteroid books. Recognized for his brilliant and peculiar literary style, he was chosen in 2007 as one of the best Latin American young writers for the Hay Festival of Bogotá. He has received prizes such as the Guggenheim scholarship, the Roger Caillois Award in France and the National Literature Award of Guatemala. He currently resides in Berlin and It is considered a key voice of the Spanish -American narrative.
