The Reading Warehouse

The Polish Boxer covers a vast landscape of human experience while enfolding a search for origins: a grandson tries to make sense of his grandfather's past and the story behind his numbered tattoo; a Serbian classical pianist longs for his forbidden heritage; a Mayan poet is torn between his studies and filial obligations; a striking young Israeli woman seeks answers in Central America; a university professor yearns for knowledge that he can't find in books and discovers something unexpected at a Mark Twain conference. Drawn to what lies beyond the range of reason, they all reach for the beautiful and fleeting, whether through humor, music, poetry, or unspoken words. Across his encounters with each of them, the narrator-a Guatemalan literature professor and writer named Eduardo Halfon-pursues his most enigmatic subject: himself.

Mapping the geography of identity in a world scarred by a legacy of violence and exile, The Polish Boxer marks the debut of a major new Latin American voice in English.

Eduardo Halfon was born in Guatemala City, moved to the United States with his family at the age of ten, went to school in South Florida, studied industrial engineering at North Carolina State University, and then returned to Guatemala to teach literature for eight years at Universidad Francisco Marroquin. Named one of best young Latin American writers by the Hay Festival of Bogota, he is also the recipient of the prestigious Jose Maria de Pereda Prize for the Short Novel. Although bilingual, Halfon chooses to write in Spanish and has published nine books of fiction. In 2011 he received a Guggenheim Fellowship to work on continuing the story The Polish Boxer, which is inspired by his own family history and is the first of his novels to be published in English. Halfon currently lives in Nebraska and travels frequently to Guatemala.

Lisa Dillman is a translator from Spanish and Catalan and a lecturer at Emory University.

Armando Duran has appeared in films, television, and regional theaters throughout the West Coast. For the last decade he has been a member of the resident acting company at the Oregon Shakespeare Festival. In 2009 he was named by AudioFile as Best Voice in Biography and History for his narration of Che Guevara. A native Californian, he divides his time between Los Angeles and Ashland, Oregon.

Daniel Hahn is the translator of Agualusa's award-winning novels Creole and The Book of Chameleons, as well as My Father's Wives.

Anne McLean has won the Independent Foreign Fiction Prize twice, as well as the Premio Valle Inclan. She has translated the works of Javier Cercas, Julio Cortazar, Carmen Martn Gaite, Ignacio Padilla, and Evelio Rosero.

Agustin Fernandez Mallo was born in La Coruna, Spain in 1967. Before devoting himself full-time to his fiction and poetry, he worked for many years as an experimental physicist. His collected poems were published in Spain in 2012.

Thomas Bunstead has translated Enrique Vila-Matas, Aixa de la Cruz, Eduardo Halfon, Yuri Herrera, and Rodrigo Fresan. His own writing has appeared in the Times Literary Supplement, The Paris Review Daily, and TheIndependent on Sunday.