Canción

Title:

Canción

Uniform Title:

Canción. English

Author:

Halfon, Eduardo, 1971- author.

Added Author:

Hahn, Daniel,

Dillman, Lisa,

Personal Author:

Halfon, Eduardo, 1971- author.

ISBN:

9781954276079

Edition:

First edition.

Physical Description:

158 pages ; 19 cm

Abstract:

"In Canción, Eduardo Halfon's eponymous wanderer is invited to a Lebanese writers' conference in Japan, where he reflects on his Jewish grandfather's multifaceted identity. To understand more about the cold, fateful day in January 1967 when his grandfather was abducted by Guatemalan guerillas, Halfon searches his childhood memories and, soon, chance encounters around the world lead to more clues about his grandfather's captors, including a butcher nicknamed "Canción" (or song). As a brutal and complex history emerges against the backdrop of the Guatamalan Civil War, Halfon finds echoes in the stories of a woman he meets in Japan whose grandfather survived the atomic bombing of Hiroshima. Through exquisite prose and intricate storytelling, Halfon exposes the atrocities of war and the effect that silence and extreme violence have on family and identity"-- Provided by publisher.

Subject Term:

Missing persons -- Fiction.

Civil-military relations -- Guatemala -- Fiction.

Geographic Term:

Guatemala -- History -- Civil War, 1960-1996 -- Fiction.

Genre:

War stories.

Summary:

Holds:

Available:*

Library	Material Type	Shelf Number	Status
Searching... Broad Rock	Book	FICTION HALFON	Searching... Unknown
Searching... Ginter Park	Book	FICTION HALFON	Searching... Unknown
Searching... Main Library	Book	FICTION HALFON	Searching... Unknown
Searching... West End	Book	FICTION HALFON	Searching... Unknown
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Summary

From internationally celebrated Eduardo Halfon comes a new installment in his hero's nomadic odyssey as he searches for answers surrounding his grandfather's abduction

In Canción , Eduardo Halfon's eponymous wanderer is invited to a Lebanese writers' conference in Japan, where he reflects on his Jewish grandfather's multifaceted identity. To understand more about the cold, fateful day in January 1967 when his grandfather was abducted by Guatemalan guerillas, Halfon searches his childhood memories. Soon, chance encounters around the world lead to more clues about his grandfather's captors, including a butcher nicknamed "Canción" (or song). As a brutal and complex history emerges against the backdrop of the Guatemalan Civil War, Halfon finds echoes in the stories of a woman he meets in Japan whose grandfather survived the atomic bombing of Hiroshima.

Through exquisite prose and intricate storytelling, Halfon exposes the atrocities of war and the effect that silence and extreme violence have on family and identity.

Reviews (1)

Kirkus Review

Fiction coats reality--or is it the other way around?--in Halfon's brief but eventful account of life during Guatemala's bloody civil war. The book opens with Halfon, a Guatemalan Jew, attending a Lebanese writers conference in Tokyo "disguised as an Arab." He knows only a few words of Arabic and has negligible ties to Lebanon but accepts a rather curious invitation to the confab because he has never been to Japan. Thus begins an unusual family saga centered on his paternal grandfather, who was born in Beirut when it was still part of Syria and fled the city with his family as a teenager. Eduardo Halfon (same name as his grandson) becomes a wealthy textile manufacturer in Guatemala, where he is kidnapped in 1967 by a leftist guerrilla (and former butcher) known as Canción, held for ransom for 35 days, and released. All in all, not the worst outcome in a country where government commando forces were dropping innocents, including a living 3-month-old baby, into a dry well and sledgehammering or shooting children who were told they were being taken out of church to get vaccinated. "I wanted to put my fingers in my ears and be deaf and so not have to hear those voices," writes Halfon, who is referring to the intrusive noise of soldiers bursting into his grandfather's house but could be referring to any number of traumatizing moments. As in previous works of autobiographical fiction, including The Polish Boxer (2012) and Mourning (2018), Halfon, who spent much of his childhood in Florida and attended college in the U.S., draws us into this nightmarish world with his understated conversational style. "Everybody knows that Guatemala is a surreal country," his grandfather wrote in a letter to a local newspaper, but the younger Halfon makes the horrors all too real. Another minimasterpiece by a master of the form. Copyright (c) Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.