Monastery

Offer[s] surprise and revelation at every turn.

— Reader’s Digest

One senses Kafka’s ghost, along with Bolaño’s, lingering in the shadows.

— New York Review of Books

Intelligent and authentic.

— Jewish Book Council

Monastery, which looks at Guatemala and the world from the divided perspective of a Jew and Guatemalan [displays] a constantly surprising sensitivity, even tenderness toward both worlds and the ways they resonate even when they appear deaf to each other. . . . In the admirable translation by Lisa Dillman and Daniel Hahn, the idiomatic, contemporary American English voice comes across as innate to this cosmopolitan narrator, without losing all its Spanishness.

— The Common

Call it a confirmation bias. Everywhere I turned this year, I saw a new expression of Arab Jewish identity. The revival seems to be happening across all fields—literature, food, music—yet somehow nobody’s talking about it. . . . Imagine my excitement, then, when I discovered Eduardo Halfon’s new novel, Monastery, in which the conflicted, tragicomic protagonist denies his Arab identity when talking to certain Jews, and his Jewish identity when talking to certain Arabs.

— Jewish Daily Forward

[The protagonist] may be the perpetual wanderer, but his meditations are focused and absorbing.

— Library Journal Indie Fiction in Translation of the Year citation

Halfon gives voice to a lesser-known sector of the Jewish diaspora, reminding us in the process of the ways in which identity is both fluid and immutable.

— Publishers Weekly

[A] sly, quietly penetrating account of life on the road. . . . One of [Halfon’s] special attributes is never forcing meaning on his experiences. . . . But he’s also great at reversing our initial impressions of people and places. . . . A rising star among Latin writers, Halfon is a lively traveling companion.

— Kirkus Reviews

In this enigmatic follow-up to Halfon’s lovely The Polish Boxer, readers follow the same narrator as he journeys around Central America, Europe, and Israel. . . . As if slowly filling in negative space, Halfon gradually gives shape to the uneasy relationship he has with his own allegiances and heritage as well as the outsider position he occupies wherever he goes, even within his own country. A subtle work that defies easy categorization in the best way.

— Booklist

If I were still a bookseller, I’d happily place [Monastery] in your hands and say, ‘You’ve got to read th[is]!’

— Shelf Awareness for Readers

[Monastery] is about family and love and confusion, about being together and alone, about identity and all that entails. It’s about having faith in who we are and in who we might be and even in who we (or others) might say we are. It’s about losing that faith or rediscovering it or worrying we’ll never have it. . . . Halfon’s writing is rich . . . beautiful and of course, True.

— Bookconscious

[Monastery is] filled with the stuff of life. . . . Halfon’s talent is to take these seemingly ‘insignificant’ details and make them immensely human and make the reader think, taking the reader places he/she will not expect to go; and he does it with such grace you can’t help but be pulled along and become immersed in it.

— Desvarío

Much like his wispy, smoke-filled covers, Eduardo Halfon’s writing has an ephemeral quality that is both wondrous and intriguing. In Monastery, the same mysterious narrator as in Halfon’s previous work, The Polish Boxer, returns to lead us once again on nomadic travels through time and place.

— Shawn Donley, Powell’s Books (Portland, OR)

Prismatically expands the possibilities for interpretation. . . . Detachment and dislocation have rarely been so well depicted as this.

— James Crossley, Island Books (Mercer Island, WA) at Three Percent

Written as linked recollections, the stories in Monastery divulge a man who introduces himself not with who he is but through what he cares to know about someone else.

— Todd Wellman, Boswell Book Company (Milwaukee, WI)