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Tarantula

By Eduardo Halfon
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Brief Description
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.... Read More
Format: Paperback / softback
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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.

Book Details

INFORMATION

ISBN: 9781405986762

Publisher: Penguin Books Ltd

Format: Paperback / softback

Date Published: 05 March 2026

Country: United Kingdom

Imprint: Penguin Books Ltd

Contributors:

  • Translated by Daniel Hahn

Audience: General / adult, Primary and secondary education, Tertiary education, Professional and scholarly

DIMENSIONS

Spine width: 13.0mm

Width: 130.0mm

Height: 197.0mm

Weight: 165g

Pages: 192

Collections

Biography & Memoir Eduardo Halfon Education & Reference Fiction General Fiction History & Archaeology History & Military Literary Fiction Military History Penguin Books

About the Author

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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