Eduardo Halfon

Eduardo Halfon (born 1971) is a Guatemalan writer.

Early life

Eduardo Halfon was born in 1971 in Guatemala City. He studied Industrial Engineering at North Carolina State University, and later was professor of Literature at Universidad Francisco Marroquín, in Guatemala.

Career

In 2011 he received a Guggenheim Fellowship to work on continuing the story of The Polish Boxer, which is the first of his novels to be published in English, by Bellevue Literary Press in the U.S. and Pushkin Press in the U.K.

His novels include Esto no es una pipa, Saturno; De cabo roto; El ángel literario; El boxeador polaco; and La pirueta, which won the José María de Pereda Prize for Short Novel in Santander, Spain. His short fiction has been published in English, French, Italian, Portuguese, Serbian, and Dutch. He has taught literature at Guatemala; in 2007 the Bogotá Hay Festival listed him as one of “39 best young Latin American writers.”

Published works

• Esto no es una pipa, Saturno (Alfaguara 2003, Punto de Lectura 2007)
• De cabo roto (Littera Books 2003)
• El ángel literario (Anagrama 2004, Semifinalist of the Herralde Prize for Novel)
• Siete minutos de desasosiego (Panamericana Editorial 2007)
• Clases de hebreo (AMG 2008)
• Clases de dibujo (AMG 2009, XV Café Bretón y Bodegas Olarra Literary Prize)
• El boxeador polaco (Pre-Textos 2008)
• La pirueta (Pre-Textos 2010, XIV José María de Pereda Prize for Short Novel)
• Mañana nunca lo hablamos (Pre-Textos 2011)
• Elocuencias de un tartamudo (Pre-Textos 2012)
• Monasterio (Libros del Asteroide 2012)

Works Translated into English

• The Polish Boxer (Bellevue Literary Press,Pushkin Press, 2012)
• Monastery (Bellevue Literary Press, 2014)

Awards

In 2007 he was named one of the best young Latin American writers by the Hay Festival of Bogotá.