Mourning

WINNER OF THE INTERNATIONAL LATINO BOOK AWARD
WINNER OF THE EDWARD LEWIS WALLANT AWARD
NEUSTADT INTERNATIONAL PRIZE FINALIST
BALCONES FICTION PRIZE FINALIST
PEN TRANSLATION LONGLIST
KIRKUS PRIZE FINALIST

The nomadic odyssey of Eduardo Halfon continues as he searches for his roots through tangled childhood memories of a haunting family tragedy.

In Mourning, Eduardo Halfon's eponymous narrator travels to Poland, Italy, the U.S., and the Guatemalan countryside in search of secrets he can barely name. He follows memory's strands back to his maternal roots in Jewish Poland and to the contradictory, forbidden stories of his father's Lebanese-Jewish immigrant family, specifically surrounding the long-ago childhood death by drowning of his uncle Salomón. But what, or who, really killed Salomón?

As he goes deeper, he realizes that the truth lies buried in his own past, in the brutal Guatemala of the 1970s and his subsequent exile to the American South. Mourning is a subtle and stirring reflection on the formative and destructive power of family mythology, silence, and loss.

"A feat of literary acrobatics." —New York Review of Books

"One of the most talented and exciting writers of our time." —Christopher Merrill, director of the International Writing Program at the University of Iowa

"Halfon is a brilliant storyteller." —Daniel Alarcón

"Halfon's prose is as delicate, precise, and ineffable as precocious art, a lighthouse that illuminates everything." —Francisco Goldman

"It is not often that one encounters such a mix of personal engagement and literary passion, or pain and tenderness." —Andrés Neuman

"Deeply accessible, deeply moving." —Los Angeles Times

"Offer[s] surprise and revelation at every turn." —Reader's Digest

"One senses Kafka's ghost, along with Bolaño's, lingering in the shadows. . . . [Halfon's] books, which take on such dark subjects, are so enjoyable to read." —New York Review of Books