“Tarantula”: Eduardo Halfon presented his work in a packed Sala Storni

The pleasure is ours, Eduardo Halfon . The Guatemalan writer appeared this weekend before a packed Sala Alfonsina Storni at the Book Fair, moderated by journalist Hinde Pomeraniec , a connoisseur of his work . He delighted everyone with his sense of humor, his anecdotes, and the simplicity with which he shared details of his creative process.

Halfon, who currently lives in Berlin but has followed the path of any self-respecting writer, having lived for a time in Paris and then, since he was 10, in the United States with his family, came to present his book , Tarantula . For those who haven't read his book, he clarified that there are no such spiders, despite the title.

Pomeraniec, who interviewed him several times, outlined the biography of the writer, whose Jewish family emigrated to the United States because his father didn't want his children to grow up in a country torn apart by civil war. Upon returning to Guatemala as an adult, he studied philosophy and literature . But he is also an engineer. Until then, the moderator said, Halfón wasn't a reader, nor did he come from a family of readers, "until he began to read and became a deliriously adept reader."

And he immediately highlighted the different Halfons who appear as narrators in his work, who, as the author later recounted, manage to make his readers mistake them for the real Halfon. And therein lies the most curious detail of his work: successfully crossing that barrier between fiction and reality.

The writer immediately said, "There is no Latin American country where my work is better read than in Argentina." And the audience erupted with delight. "There are two places where my books fit in: Argentina and France. Not in Spain, Mexico, or Guatemala. Why? Because this is a country of readers, and of this kind of books. That could be a hypothesis . In Spain, they don't know what to do with my books, or which shelf to put them on." Laughter from the audience.

Halfon continued: “They don't like such short books either. But I feel that here in Argentina and France there's a certain affinity regarding the themes .” But he also added another relevant element: “ We share a sense of humor . There's an Argentine sense of humor that I share. I don't know if it's this Italian influence, but there's something ironic, a little contemptuous and mocking, clownish, that I love.”

Halfon immediately quoted the words of Argentine writer Martín Kohan, with whom he had shared another conversation at the Book Fair, "referring to the great work of Argentine public schools. Guatemala doesn't have that. We don't have the literary tradition or the great writers you have here, who have left fertile ground."

Pomeraniec then asked him to tell the anecdote that gave rise to Tarantula , which Halfon recounted at a luncheon with academics and writers with whom he shared the residency that led him to settle in Berlin. “It was a very good scholarship from the Wissenschaftskolleg Institute for one year. They only award 45 scholarships a year, and 40 are for academics. The rest are artists or writers. They then asked me to fulfill one condition: to have lunch every day with the other scholarship holders. For me, it was an effort .” Laughter from those present.

“ If we're going to talk about the book, there are no tarantulas. I arrived in Germany from France. The world was shut down because of the pandemic. We went to my brother's house in the south of France with my young son. My son brought back all that uncertainty. I dedicated myself to being a dad,” shared the author of Saturn .

And then came the anecdote from the lunch with the German academics that left them speechless: the one about the camp, a story with which Tarantula begins: “I was beginning to reject Judaism (the subject is always addressed from a critical perspective in your books) . We had been in the United States for three years and were quite rebellious about Guatemala, about the Spanish I had stopped speaking. My family sent me to a Jewish children's camp located in a forest. This happened in the middle of the Guatemalan civil war . I had to make an effort to speak and write Spanish. On the morning of the fourth day, we woke up screaming. The camp had been transformed. Overnight, it went from being a scout camp to a concentration camp. And our counselor was dressed as a Nazi , with his black uniform and red armband, and I thought I saw a tarantula crawling on his arm.” The audience was speechless.

That's how they spent the entire day in that recreated concentration camp. " I told this story at lunch, and the Germans couldn't believe it. I went home and wrote this first page, not knowing where it would lead," Halfon said.

The idea of ​​the age of cruelty , the writer later said in response to a question from the moderator, is present in his book: “There are several cruelties, not just that of the Guatemalan war. A genocide within a genocide. But I also deeply believe that I needed Berlin to write this . My grandfather had been imprisoned in the Sachsenhausen concentration camp, near Berlin.”

Berlin was ground zero, and that first page became literature. “At that point, it stopped being autobiographical,” the author explained. “Then I started working on several things at once. I think about that time,” he commented, referring to his writing process.

Halfon later said he revived his childhood before leaving Guatemala , "before they kicked me out of my childhood. My readers know how important childhood is to me. I'm constantly moving through that period. It's like a lost paradise, so when I write, I try to recover it. I talk about those 10 years when I spoke Spanish. And when I return to that time, I remember things I thought I'd forgotten." The audience, silent, listened to the content.

When talking about his creative process, Eduardo Halfon emphasized that he always begins work without knowing where it will go, initially spontaneously and in Spanish.

He then referred to memory as "a fiction, which also implies truth, but is not reliable. We invent it. And it's an important subject for writers."

He also talked about the other Halfon in his books, who is completely different from his true self. “I think I know why I do it. I discovered it with my book Saturn , in 2003. That book is a very Kafkaesque letter to a father from a son who is obsessed with suicidal writers and blames him for their absence. The first review I received was titled: 'We Must Save Halfon.' I loved it. I wasn't expecting such a literal reading. But I realized that if I could make the reader forget that it's fiction, the emotional impact would be stronger.”

And he defined himself as a magician who goes around the world telling his tricks . Laughter came from those present. In the front row, writer Josefina Delgado—an avid reader of Halfon's—celebrated his sense of humor.

Toward the end, Pomeraniec asked him about the October 7 attack in Israel by the Hamas terrorist group. A critic of Judaism, the writer said he didn't understand why such deep hatred had developed . "It's barbaric," he said, noting that he takes responsibility for the criticism he has received for his position on the current war in Gaza, which is not aligned with Netanyahu.

As Halfon has already expressed, "since the October 7 attack and the Israeli government's inhumane response against the Palestinian people, antisemitism has grown or even come out more because things are now confused, being Jewish is confused with being Israeli."

In Tarantula , the writer tells the story of a child who doesn't understand what's happening. In an interview with Radio Nacional de España, he compared that story to that of Palestinian children right now : "What's happening today will perpetuate that hatred for a long time," he emphasized.