Cancin

From the 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 multi-faceted identity and kidnapping by Guatemalan guerillas during the country's civil war. To understand more about that cold, fateful day in January 1967 when his grandfather was abducted, Halfon first recalls the moment his great uncle's reading of a Turkish coffee was interrupted by the menacing entrance of government soldiers. From there, his memories—and chance encounters in bars, barracks, and book fairs 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, Halfon finds it mirrored 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.