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    Monastery
    Monastery
    Monastery
    Ebook135 pages3 hours

    Monastery

    By Eduardo Halfon

    4/5

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    About this ebook

    The nomadic odyssey of Eduardo Halfon continues as he searches for clues about his identity across Central America and Europe, New York and Jerusalem

    In Monastery, Eduardo Halfon’s eponymous wanderer travels from Guatemalan cities, villages, coffee plantations, and border towns to a private jazz concert in Harlem, a former German U-Boat base on the French Breton coast, and Israel, where he escapes from his sister’s Orthodox Jewish wedding into an erotic adventure with the enigmatic Tamara. His passing encounters are unforgettable; his relationships, problematic. At once a world citizen and a writer who mistrusts the power of language, he is pursued by history’s ghosts and unanswerable questions. He is a cartographer of identity on a compelling journey to an uncertain destination. As he draws and redraws his boundaries, he confronts us with the limitations of our own.

    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherBellevue Literary Press
    Release dateSep 22, 2014
    ISBN9781934137833
    Monastery
    Author

    Eduardo Halfon

    Eduardo Halfon nació en 1971 en la ciudad de Guatemala. Ha publicado quince libros de ficción. Su obra ha sido traducida al inglés, alemán, francés, italiano, serbio, portugués, holandés, japonés, noruego, turco y croata. En 2007 fue nombrado uno de los 39 mejores jóvenes escritores latinoamericanos por el Hay Festival de Bogotá. En 2011 recibió la beca Guggenheim, y en 2015 le fue otorgado en Francia el prestigioso Premio Roger Caillois de Literatura Latinoamericana. Su novela “Duelo” (Libros del Asteroide 2017) fue galardonada con el Premio de las Librerías de Navarra (España), el Prix du Meilleur Livre Étranger (Francia), el Edward Lewis Wallant Award (EEUU) y el International Latino Book Award (EEUU). Su novela más reciente es “Canción” (Libros del Asteroide 2021). En 2018 recibió el Premio Nacional de Literatura de Guatemala, el mayor galardón literario de su país natal.

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    Reviews for Monastery

    4/5

    45 ratings14 reviews

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    • 4/5
      Having read "The Polish Boxer," I was hoping "Monastery" would be more what a consider a novel to be - in my mind, a narrative that travels somewhat cohesively from beginning to end. I have enjoyed many novels that meander through time, or pick up at different points of a story, but to me this book reads more like a collection of stories.That said, I really enjoyed many of the stories. One that I thought was particularly beautiful was "Surviving Sundays." The language was elegant, the setting came to life and the characters of the women in the story were evanescent. Pain and beauty were intertwined in a beautiful narrative. It was truly a story I will ponder over and go back to reread. For that alone, I was delighted to read this book.Eduardo Halfon is a writer I would not hesitate to read again, now that my expectations are adjusted. I received these books as an early reviewer for Librarything. This program is such a great opportunity to read things I never would have picked up on my own. Kudos, Librarything, for instituting it!
    • 4/5
      Like an itinerant troubadour of old, Eduardo Halfon, the author’s eponymous protagonist in this collection of short stories, tells his tales in various geographic settings. Most take place in disparate locales in Guatemala, Halfon’s native country. Others are set in Israel, Harlem and France. On occasion a story at a different location appears within a story as the teller reminisces about the past.The characters that people Halfon’s journeys in Monastery are always intriguing and interesting. His spare tales reflect a kind of probing for personal identity and meaning told with a keen sense of irony and subtle humor. The narrator’s background as a Guatemalan of Arab-Polish-Jewish descent often poses existential difficulties for him. That he shares the same name as the author also gives the stories a somewhat mysterious quality, causing the reader to wonder about the extent to which they are based on true-life experiences.Halfon now resides in Nebraska, but frequently returns to his native Guatemala. His book The Polish Boxer, the first to be published in English, was awarded the 2010 Jose Maria de Pereda Prize for Short Novel and in 2011 he received a Guggenheim Fellowship to continue his work on that narrative. In Monastery, Halfon, as narrator, integrates the story of his Polish grandfather into his other tales. It is recommended for all short-story readers who appreciate some global diversity, wry humor, and problematic life questions thrown in the mix.
    • 5/5
      Once again, Halfon has entranced me with his writing, his travels, and above all, his storytelling. I was especially struck by something that he said here while writing about his grandfather " a story is really many stories," and that "a story grows, changes its skin, does acrobatics on the tightrope of time." This is more or less how he himself writes as he tells of traveling from place to place in an effort to uncover how people (including himself) define/identify themselves. Is it through religion? He is a Guatemalan Jew, but his Orthodox Jewish sister, for example, tells them on a visit home that "as far as she and the Orthodox rabbis and teachers saw it," the rest of the family weren't Jews. Is it through place? His grandfather's siblings all fled Beirut at the beginning of the 20th century, each ending up in a different country. Through experience, memories or history? In the names our parents give us? Through the eyes of others? In the clothes we wear? The book may only consist of 150+ pages, but it speaks to very big questions. It also speaks to the art of writing. Halfon may be not be the most reliable storyteller, but even there, not all stories are built on absolute truths, a point he very clearly gets across not only in this book, but in his earlier book, The Polish Boxer, as well. People who are expecting a tidy ending in either book might be a bit disappointed, but Halfon is on a journey, and as he notes, "all our journeys are really one single journey, with multiple stops and layovers...every journey , any journey, is not linear, and is not circular, and it never ends." (83)I loved the bird imagery in this book, and that of walls - but even more, I absolutely love the way this man writes. Highly, highly recommended. my sincere thanks to LT for offering me the chance to read this book, and to Bellevue Literary Press as well. Both of Mr. Halfon's books are keepers!
    • 5/5
      Who are we? How do we deal with relationships and identities that are placed onto us, that by either birth or death are ours without our consent? How do we deal with who we are, and what we've lived through? Can we deny it? Is that denial a lie, or can it, through practice, become it's own truth? And what role does storytelling have to play in all of this?Eduardo Halfon explores these questions through a meandering narrative in which his eponymous main character travels about Columbia, Guatamala, Poland, Jerusalem and New York. His scenes are frustratingly fractured and incomplete. The people he meets are only part of the story briefly, and we end up parting with them well before we begin to understand them, but Halfon seems to delight in finding a sort of proof of life by way of the short human connections he makes as he flits from country to country, and he manages to convey that jolt of human connection in his little scenes. Another point of frustration is in how blurred the lines of reality and fiction are throughout the book, but this is one of its strengths. It is possible that nothing in the book ever happened. It's possible that all of it did. At some point it's much sweeter that the question remains unanswered, just like how the many stories the characters in Monastery hint at remain ultimately untold. Monastery is written in a much similar format to The Polish Boxer, a previous novel of his, though the focus is a little different. I don't know if I would have enjoyed Monastery so much if I had not read The Polish Boxer first. This book lacks the crescendo of the previous one, and alludes to many things in The Polish Boxer, even going so far as to repeat a chunk of content. It's a good continuation, but I wonder if it can stand alone.I would suggest Monastery for people who enjoy experimentation with their narrative, and are comfortable with not having closure. Don't read if you need a beginning, middle, and end.
    • 5/5
      Whether he is exploring an agricultural co-op in his Guatemalan home land, a jazz salon in Harlem, a Nazi submarine-building base in France, or going (or not) to his sister’s wedding in Tel Aviv, Eduardo Halfon is really exploring his own identity. He is Guatemalan born, with Jewish and Arab ancestry, educated (and currently living) in the United States. He is confused and amused by his dilemma and is a charming storyteller.Unlike the Norwegian Karl Ove Knausgård’s pondering autobiographical tomes, Halfron’s autobiographical stories and observations are short, to the point, and never boring. Halfon’s earlier book The Polish Boxer and Monastery can each stand alone, but reading one enhances the reading of the other.A delight to read.
    • 4/5
      I've read both Monastery and The Polish Boxer, and Halfon has become one of my favorite authors. Structurally, each chapter of two books is a separate short story that could stand alone, but taken together, they make a novel. This enables Halfon to explore various themes without losing the overall theme of identity and perhaps something else that is clearly there that I'm having difficulty naming. It's more of a general overall sense of how our interconnectedness and our backgrounds help to define us despite that our inner selves sometimes with the deny that based on who we would like to be rather than who we are. Halfon's ability to communicate this through his short story/novel/autobiography? is wonderful.
    • 3/5
      Literary fiction by a highly regarded Latin American writer. This book continues the geographic and personal quests of the narrator in The Polish Boxer. He stays on the move. Indeed it seems that he is almost compelled to move from persons to places. Place seems to give him a degree of repose not to be found in persons. Arriving and leaving also allows for a degree of shape-shifting, as he frequently cloaks his presentation of self. The author's name serves to designate the narrator so we can only conclude that the encounters described are a blend of memoir and fiction. A persona that persists is the teacher/academic with a strong interest in literature. The text is translated from the Spanish by two well qualified language scribes.
    • 5/5
      This is Halfon's follow up to his , The Polish Boxer, and he continues the story of his heritage and journey through life. As he states in this book, "in the end, our history is our only patrimony".He follows his sister to Israel for her wedding to an orthodox Jew and comes face to face with his own atheism and conflicts with his Jewish identity. In a recurring dream he hides his Jewish identity to elude a Palestinian terrorist and relates tales of Jews who survived the Nazi regime, one of them Jerzy Kosinski. He does this without judgment, "everyone decides how to save themselves...with whatever it takes, whatever makes the most sense to us, whatever hurts the least...but we all act out the role of our best disguise...in the end, no one is saved".His adventure with an Israeli stewardess he first met in a bar in Guatemala serves as an interlude, his groping for truth while also dealing his sexual appetites.Halfon is a heavy thinker, bringing historically interesting tidbits, to better illustrate his often cynical viewpoint on the true meanings of life.I highly recommend him. If you like Junot Diaz, you will enjoy Eduardo Halfon's unique voice.
    • 5/5
      How delightful it was to take a 'virtual journey' from Guatemala to France, then New York with writer and narrator Eduardo Halfon in his new book Monastery. This author is a brilliant storyteller and I am beginning to read The Polish Boxer today! Bravo!
    • 5/5
      Monastery by Eduardo Halfon Translated by Lisa Dillman and Daniel HahnPublished by Bellevue Literary PressI could submit a one-sentence review of this wonderful book:"This is the story of his beloved grandfather who understood that a story is really many stories."Fact: "Monastery" is a deceptively slender book: only 158 pages, yet we see its narrator in Israel, Guatemala, Belize and New York. With him we learn about coffee and concentration camps, about growing up, and why a cat is named Hitler. When we finish reading it we plan to reread it ~~~ and we do.~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~An afternoon with my computer brought his two faces: he looks different when speaking Spanish and/or unaccented English. There are several You Tube pieces. My favorite, which I watched (twice, on full screen) was “On the Fly.” Interview questions appear in print, his answers are thoughtful and ingratiating.An NPR program, “Alt Latino” from May 19, 2013 was especially interesting.As a reader I am delighted Bellevue Literary Press has published these books.
    • 4/5
      I read this book in one sitting but will reflect on it for a long while. The author Eduardo Halfon follows the writer and self-described liar Eduardo Halfon as he travels the world, claiming his family's history while writing his own. Halfon is a gifted writer, and this is a lovely book.
    • 4/5
      Halfon is a prize-winning Guatemalan writer and the recipient of a Guggenheim Fellowship. He has one other book, The Polish Boxer, translated into English.Monastery is a short work—about 150 pages—and reads as a series of inter-connected short stories. The main character—also named Eduardo Halfon—is the same main character as in [The Polish Boxer]. Halfon is a lovely writer and props to the translators [[Lisa Dillman]] and [[Daniel Hahn]]. I loved this book from the first sentence, but did notice that some of the stories were stronger than others. This is a work that talks about family, nationality, and identity. A central theme is Halfon’s identity—or lack of identity—as a Jew. I think that my favorite story was the first, “Tel Aviv was an Inferno” in which Eduardo goes to Israel to attend his younger sisters Orthodox Jewish wedding. In this story, Eduardo buys a tortilla from a street vendor, She asks where he is from:“”I finished chewing a mouthful, my tongue stunned by the chiltepe, and said I was Guatemalan, just like her. She smiled politely, perhaps suspiciously, perhaps thinking the same thing I was thinking, and turned her eyes up toward the cloudless sky. I don’t know why I always find it hard to convince people, to convince myself even, that I’m Guatemalan. “
    • 4/5
      Eduardo Halfon's Monastery reads like an addendum to his first collection, The Polish Boxer — and that's not a bad thing. The stories are as compelling; the returning, remembered characters are just as rich and fully drawn and the narrator (Halfon) continues his journey thru the world and self-discovery.Several of these short tales are as wonderfully written (and perfectly translated) as any autobiographical travel narrative I have read. Their charm is in the economy of language and poetry that Halfon uses to describe a life of doubt and resolution, discovery and lose.
    • 5/5
      Eduardo Halfon, the narrator of Eduado Halfon's earlier novel The Polish Boxer, is back again, traveling again, searching for meaning again in his new, small book Monastery. He considers telling a customs officer on the border between Guatemala and Belize that, "...all our journeys are really one single journey, with multiple stops and layovers. That every journey, any journey, is not linear, and is not circular, and it never ends. That every journey is meaningless." Halfon shapes this book in a circle, and it really doesn't end. Each chapter is a layover only vaguely connected to the other stops. On the way, however, the reader visits many countries and encounters birds, which also live by moving - a list of birds one may not eat recited by his future brother-in-law, an Orthodox Jew in Israel, a feisty red macaw in a tiny restaurant in a tiny village on the same Guatemalan-Belize border. Halfon is an outsider seeking identity. In Israel he's a Jew who is ¾ Arab. In Guatemala people don't realize that he's Guatemalan. In New York he's one of the many just passing through on his own pilgrimage. Once again it is his Polish grandfather whose stories point him toward some resolution although he says, "In the end, no one is saved." That may be, but Halfon is a beautiful writer worth reading and rereading. This should be a somber, dispiriting book, but somehow it is simply thoughtful. Like his grandfather, Eduardo is a liar, shaping truth by falsehood. I will be happy to travel with him the next time around.(My thanks to Bellevue Press for an uncorrected proof of this book, given for an honest review, which this is to the best of my ability.)

    Book preview

    Monastery - Eduardo Halfon

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