Eduardo Halfon's first book, The Polish Boxer, was lauded by both the New York Times and the Los Angeles Times, featured on NPR, championed by booksellers from coast to coast, and named a finalist for the International Latino Book Award. With this book, Eduardo Halfon--a fluent English speaker--is poised to become an even bigger figure in American and international letters.
Monastery picks up on characters and stories from The Polish Boxer, but this time Halfon's narrator isn't pursuing a mysterious Serbian Gypsy pianist, but a sensual Israeli woman, who briefly appeared in The Polish Boxer, in a bar in Antigua. Fans of The Polish Boxer will love how Halfon finely reworks the narrative, understanding Halfon's revelation "that a story grows, changes its skin, does acrobatics on the tightrope of time."
Like other bestselling and award-winning Bellevue Literary Press fiction-- The Sojourn, Tinkers, Widow--this book is a semi-autobiographical literary gem based on the author's family stories. It is about roots, about origins: the subtly subversive longing for lost identity, the emotionally treacherous territory of cultural exile, and the lingering legacy of history's atrocities.
