Overview

Conversation-starting and prize-winning international fiction- an extraordinary meditation on violence, conspiracy and the many complex afterlives of the Holocaust 'We woke up to screaming. In the doorway stood the silhouette of Samuel Blum, our friend and unconditional protector, now uniformed in black and carrying a club. Crawling down his left arm, I slowly noticed, was a huge tarantula.' In 1984, twelve-year-old Eduardo is sent to the mountains for what his parents describe as Jewish summer camp. What it turns out to be is an immersive re-enactment of a Nazi concentration camp. Decades later, on the other side of the world, Eduardo sits across a table from a stranger. This is Samuel Blum, the Jewish camp counsellor who transformed into a terrifying Nazi commandant all those years ago. Now he is an old man, and he is ready to talk. Tarantula is a novel about individual and collective inheritance, individual and collective violence; about memory, trauma, connection and estrangement. It asks what it means to be a Jew living in the long aftermath of the twentieth century, and how the past lives on the present.

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9781405986762

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Reviews

An extraordinary book. What begins as a shocking story reveals itself as a sidelong, mysterious meditation on trauma, vengeance and the terrible capacity of the past to shape the present -- Olivia Laing This novel about a violent and traumatic childhood episode is eerily current – the questions it raises about identity, resistance and history are both deeply personal and universal -- Mariana Enriquez Chilling. A story set in the Guatemalan jungle that resonates in Gaza, in Donbas, anywhere victims end up resembling their own executioners -- Santiago Roncagliolo Among [Halfon’s] preoccupations are the legacy of violence and mass murder in Europe and Latin America; the frequency and facility with which the past intrudes upon the present; the quixotic effort to separate family myth from historical fact; and the ways in which pleasure consoles us * New York Review of Books (USA) * This taut, magisterial novel explores the possibility of disentangling one's trauma and one's roots * Le Monde des Livres (France) * Virtuoso... [An] exploration of memory, of the power of imagination, of Jewish and Guatemalan identity, and of the transmission of a family or collective history * Florilettres (France) *

This novel about a violent and traumatic childhood episode is eerily current – the questions it raises about identity, resistance and history are both deeply personal and universal -- Mariana Enriquez Among [Halfon’s] preoccupations are the legacy of violence and mass murder in Europe and Latin America; the frequency and facility with which the past intrudes upon the present; the quixotic effort to separate family myth from historical fact; and the ways in which pleasure consoles us * New York Review of Books (USA) * This taut, magisterial novel explores the possibility of disentangling one's trauma and one's roots * Le Monde des Livres (France) * Virtuoso... [An] exploration of memory, of the power of imagination, of Jewish and Guatemalan identity, and of the transmission of a family or collective history * Florilettres (France) *

Among [Halfon’s] preoccupations are the legacy of violence and mass murder in Europe and Latin America; the frequency and facility with which the past intrudes upon the present; the quixotic effort to separate family myth from historical fact; and the ways in which pleasure consoles us * New York Review of Books (USA) * This taut, magisterial novel explores the possibility of disentangling one's trauma and one's roots * Le Monde des Livres (France) * Virtuoso... [An] exploration of memory, of the power of imagination, of Jewish and Guatemalan identity, and of the transmission of a family or collective history * Florilettres (France) *

An extraordinary book. What begins as a shocking story reveals itself as a sidelong, mysterious meditation on trauma, vengeance and the terrible capacity of the past to shape the present -- Olivia Laing This novel about a violent and traumatic childhood episode is eerily current – the questions it raises about identity, resistance and history are both deeply personal and universal -- Mariana Enriquez Chilling. A story set in the Guatemalan jungle that resonates in Gaza, in Donbas, anywhere victims end up resembling their own executioners -- Santiago Roncagliolo Among [Halfon’s] preoccupations are the legacy of violence and mass murder in Europe and Latin America; the frequency and facility with which the past intrudes upon the present; the quixotic effort to separate family myth from historical fact; and the ways in which pleasure consoles us * New York Review of Books (USA) * This taut, magisterial novel explores the possibility of disentangling one's trauma and one's roots * Le Monde des Livres (France) * Virtuoso... [An] exploration of memory, of the power of imagination, of Jewish and Guatemalan identity, and of the transmission of a family or collective history * Florilettres (France) * Award-winning Guatemalan author Eduardo Halfon is considered to be one of the great global writers of his generation * Service95, 'The 21 Must-Read Books To Have On Your Radar In 2026' *

Author Information

Eduardo Halfon (Author) Eduardo Halfon is one of the great global writers of his generation. He is the author of fifteen novels examining questions of identity, memory and history as a Jewish man, as a Guatemalan, as a descendant of European and Middle Eastern refugees, including The Polish Boxer, Mourning and Canci n . He has received international literary awards including the Prix Medicis tranger, the Prix Roger Caillois and the Prix du Meilleur Livre tranger in France, the Premio de la Critica and the Premio Jose Maria de Pereda in Spain, the Edward Lewis Wallant Award and the International Latino Book Award in the US, and the National Prize in Literature of Guatemala, his country's highest literary honour. Eduardo Halfon was named one of the thirty-nine most promising young Latin American writers by the Hay Festival in Bogota and is a Fellow of the Guggenheim Foundation. His work has been translated into sixteen languages. Tarantula is his latest novel. Daniel Hahn (Translator) Daniel Hahn is a writer, editor and literary translator. He translates from Portuguese, Spanish and French and has translated literature from Europe, Africa and the Americas, including the work of Jose Eduardo Agualusa, Philippe Claudel, Maria Duenas, Eduardo Halfon, Jose Luis Peixoto, Jose Saramago and Gon alo M. Tavares. His translations have won literary awards including the Independent Foreign Fiction Prize and the International Dublin Literary Award, and been shortlisted for the Man Booker International Prize and the LA Times Book Award. He is also the author of several works of non-fiction, including The Tower Menagerie and the forthcoming If This Be Magic, and the award-winning children's picture-book Happiness is a Watermelon on Your Head, and is co-editor of 'The Ultimate Book Guide' series. He reviews for publications including the Guardian, Spectator and Prospect, and is former Chair of the Translators Association and the Society of Authors and former National Programme Director of the British Centre for Literary Translation.

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