Eduardo Halfon: The Joys of a Traveler
The Guatemalan, Eduardo Halfon narrates a hilarious and lucid chronicle of his trip to Israel in Monetary. In which he dissects religious intolerance during global times. The novel joins a major saga which has distinguished the author on a worldwide level.
By: Javier Mattio
La Voz (Online): Ciudad Equis
June 25, 2015
– Would you categorize your work as a single literary project?
It’s a project that I am not too conscious of but it has grown in front of me. It began in 2008, when El Boxeador Polaco (Pretextos) was published, a book of six stories woven by an Eduardo Halfon who looks a lot like me. The narrative of this book is the story of my grandfather in relation to Auschwitz, a tattoo and a boxer. Two years later, 2010, a story from that book returns in a short novel, “The Pirouette”. Monastery came to be from another story in The Polish Boxer (El Boxeador Polaco), “White Smoke.” The next book, Signor Hoffman, continues within this universe, or in other words there are four stories now, interwoven, related, narrated by one person who is looking for something and who travels a lot. All the books are trips, to Israel, Serbia, and Poland. They are short books but related, intimate and some answer questions from others. Every country that has translated my work has reformatted the books, which is interesting and very fascinating. In the U.S. The Polish Boxer includes “The Pirouette” and Monastery includes Signor Hoffman. In Japan the four stories are in one book. In Italy, Germany, France, each country is different. What I have been doing is creating a single book without knowing. All of them are part of one major project called, The Polish Boxer. This volume is the axis, center, the nucleolus that the others revolve around.
– To what extent is this really a travel account? Do you distance yourself from Halfon the narrator?
I always start with myself. I write like that. I draw from something initiate, the trip to Israel, my grandfather’s tattoo, my relationship with my father. But I am not enough. I need fiction to convey what I want, which is an emotional trip to the reader. I am another Eduardo, who is not me but is me; who has my beard but smokes, I don’t smoke, he’s more bold, audacious, confronts the taxi-driver who says he want to kill all the Arabs. I would never do that, I am much more aloof, cowardly if you will. The most autobiographical elements are not my books, my sister’s wedding or my relationship with my brother. The autobiographical elements are the fears, sensitivity, my childhood, I am much closer to this narrative than the trips or events. But evidently everything emerged from one me. My books are a collection of stories told by a single narrator. They’re episodes in the life of one persona, connected by the same voice, the same tone, the same man and from there on can be distinctly arranged.
