the review of ‘Tarântula’, by Eduardo Haflon, and the work of Isabel Allende among the releases

In “Tarantula”, Guatemalan Eduardo Halfon returns to an event that occurred in Guatemala in the 1980s to talk about the pain of the Shoah. The author “builds a suspense that is not resolved in an explosion of action, but rather in a latent tension that permeates the consciousness of the protagonist,” writes critic Ubiratan Brasil.

In this week’s list of releases we highlight “Aphrodite”, by Isabel Allende, and “Eu quer ser Cássia Eller”, a biography of the singer written by journalist Tom Cardoso.

• Goodbye: in new book, Nobel Prize winner JM Coetzee meticulously investigates what we leave to the world
• Why read Hannah Arendt? Half a century after her death, a thinker helps explain the planet’s political moment

‘Tarantula’, by Eduardo Halfon. Translation Translation: Silvia Massimini Felix. Publisher: Autêntica Contemporanea. | Quote: Very good.

The literature of Guatemalan Eduardo Halfon is built with bricks of his own history: echoes of his personal and family life appear fictionalized in books such as “The Polish Boxer”, “Mourning”, “Canción” and now “Tarântula”. A literary project that involves memory and identity, or even a puzzle of which books are the pieces to build a new perspective on your life and that of your ancestors.

In “Tarantula,” the author returns to an event from his childhood, in the complex and violent Guatemala of the 1980s. “Memory is the starting point for everything I write,” explains Halfon, 54, who has lived in Germany for five years. “But it’s nothing more than an image, because I need literature for this memory to take shape. And the unreliability is what makes memory so literary.”

The novel takes place in 1984, when two young brothers, exiled for years in the United States, return to Guatemala forced by their parents to participate in a camp for Jewish children in a forest lost in the mountains. The program was designed to foster “the feeling of being Jewish among Jews,” says the text of the book, in which Samuel Blum is the strict instructor in charge of the camp, who carries out, among other tasks, indoctrination exercises.

The beginning of the story already highlights the level of tension that will mark this activity. “We were woken up screaming,” the text says, recounting the atmosphere of terror that spread through the tents, where all the boys remained motionless, frightened. “In the doorway stood the figure of Samuel Blum, our instructor, our unconditional friend and protector, but now dressed in black and with a stick in his hand, and uttering shouts and orders that no child understood. On his left arm, it took me a while to realize, walked an enormous tarantula.”

The arachnid will play an important role in the novel, structured to explain – both by revisiting earlier events and later situations – such a disturbing opening scene. As usual, more than the plot, Halfon is concerned with his characters and the delicate uncertainties that mark their routine. This explains the alternation between the point of view of the child of the time and that of the adult of today. After all, the essence of the novel is memory, and the author skillfully interweaves its delicate, even ambiguous, threads at certain moments.

At one point, stunned by the situation, the narrator’s brother wonders, seriously and innocently, if what he is experiencing is a dream. Here, Halfon makes a point of remembering this memory, sometimes he opens the doors to the world of dreams, sometimes he concentrates unbearable moments for survival.

His other works prove it. The stories of “The Polish Boxer” (2008), for example, revolve around this athlete, a man who gave valuable advice to the boy’s grandfather, advice that guaranteed his life in the concentration camp. “Life needs to enter into fiction,” says the author. “There is an essence, a vitality that must be present for literature to become something more. »

Identity and historical tragedy often go hand in hand. One of the highlights of the text shows Eduardo’s perception that the camp itself was a simulation of a Nazi torture camp. Confronted, Samuel responds that pain is not truly felt if it is only read in a book or heard by others. The pain and experience of the Holocaust can only begin to be understood if it is experienced by the body itself.

A situation which allows Halfon to prove the contemporaneity of a not too distant era, whose present still dialogues with the specters of violence and dehumanization of the past. To do this, it builds a suspense that does not resolve in an explosion of action, but rather in a latent tension that permeates the consciousness of the protagonist. Uncertainty is a fundamental element of the novel: the rules of the camp are never fully explained, the adults’ intentions are unclear, and the protagonist’s emotions are marked by a constant oscillation between fascination and repulsion.

Despite the tensions, Halfon, in his autofiction, makes room for poetry, especially when he reveals sensory details like the sound of the stream, the texture of the camp uniforms, and the aroma of atole corn, a hot, sweet drink. And despair is not dominant: Regina, one of the participants in this traumatic camp, meets the narrator several years later and tells him that she now works with refugee children. A moment of breathing for the reader, until then stunned by the vulnerability of adolescence.

Ubiratan Brasil is a journalist

Author: Isabella Allende. Translation: Claudia Schilling. Editor: Bertrand Brazil. Pages: 408. Price: R$189.90.

Isabel Allende explores the links between food, eroticism and identity, revealing the alchemy between pleasure and words. Amid recipes, wines and potions, a literary feast is created in which each dish is accompanied by stories and reflections on the transformative power of food. The result is a mixture of personal stories, humor, delicacy and small provocations that question limits and taboos.

“I wanted to be Cássia Eller”

Author: Tom Cardoso. Editor: Planet. Pages: 312. Price: R$69.90.

The journalist traces the intense journey of Cássia Eller, from her childhood in Rio and Belo Horizonte until her untimely death in 2001. Among many stories and confusions, Cardoso introduces her family, such as her father, an undisciplined soldier and womanizer who tried to “fix” Cássia; her mother, a singer in her youth and one of her daughter’s influences; and Eugenia, the love of his life, mother of his son, the current singer Chico Chico.

“The steepest viaduct in the world”

Author: Guilherme Azambuja Castro. Editor: Zouk. Pages: 118. Price: R$58.

Winner of the Luiz Vilela Competition and the Cepe Literature Prize, the author has established himself as one of the best names in contemporary Brazilian short stories. In this collection, he explores the transit between memory, fable and gesture in stories that cross the limit between dream and awakening, daily life and distance – always with an eye on time, affections and the always beautiful and failed attempt to capture reality.

Author: Fabio Morabito. Translation: Mariana Sanchez. Editor: Reliquary. Pages: 184. Price: R$65.90.

In the essays that make up the book, Morábito (who was born in Egypt to Italian parents and moved to Mexico as a teenager) draws on his memories and dual linguistic background to investigate how word choice or the loss of an accent shapes who we are. A story of how the author acquired his writing language, Spanish, the text oscillates between the ordinary, the intimate and the philosophical.

Author: Paula Parisot. Editor: Yellow cat. Pages: 126. Price: R$89.90.

One day like any other, the animals play in the invented forest until, suddenly, the fox discovers a wonderful tree with the most succulent fruits. The animal shakes its trunk from here and pushes it from there… and nothing! The Fruits seem stuck to the branches. To eat them, all you have to do is discover the mysterious name of the fruit. In this fable by Paula Parisot, intelligence prevails over brute force.

• 1. “The Final Secret,” Dan Brown (Archer)
• 2. “The Maid”, Freida McFadden (Arrow)
• 3. “Star Hour”, Clarice Lispector (Rocco)
• 4. “The Love Hypothesis”, Ali Hazelwood (Arrow)
• 5. “The Midnight Library”, Matt Haig (Bertrand Brasil)
• 6. ‘The head of the saint’, Socorro Acioli (Companhia das Letras)
• 7. “Better than in the movies,” Lynn Painter (Intrinsic)
• 8. ‘Verity’, Colleen Hoover (guys)
• 9. ‘Secret dinner’, Raphael Montes (Companhia das Letras)
• 10. “White Nights”, Fyodor Dostoyevsky (Principis)

• 1. ‘Coffee with Deus Pai Vol. 6 – 2026’, Júnior Rostirola (Bicycles)
• 2. “Brazil in the mirror”, Felipe Nunes (Globo Livros)
• 3. “Rich thing”, Michel Alcoforado (However)
• 4. ‘Coffee with the saints’, Luiz Alexandre Solano Rossi (Paulus)
• 2. “Tired Society”, Byung-Chul Han (Nobilis Voices)
• 6. ‘Mom, tell me your story?’, Elma Van Vliet (Sextant)
• 7. “Destroy This Diary,” Keri Smith (Intrinsic)
• 8. “Women who run with the wolves”, Clarissa Pinkola Estes (Rocco)
• 9. “In search of meaning”, Viktor E. Frankl (Editora Vozes)
• 10. “Good Girl Syndrome,” Harriet B. Braiker (Bestseller)

• 1. “Elo Monster Books”, Enaldinho (Pixel)
• 2. “Diary of a Wimpy Kid 20 – Insane Party”, Jeff Kinney (VR)
• 3. ‘The Little Prince’, Antoine de Saint-Exupéry (Various publishers)
• 4. “Dive into the Darkness,” Elley Cooper; Scott Cawthon (intrinsic)
• 5. “Diary of a Wimpy Kid 1,” Jeff Kinney (VR)
• 6. ‘The Adventures of Mike 5 – On the Road’, Gabriel Dearo and Manu Diglio (Outro Planeta)
• 7. ‘The Diary of a Clumsy Princess’, Maidy Lacerda (Outro Planeta)
• 8. “Coraline”, Neil Gaiman (intrinsic)
• 9. “Alchemized”, SenLinYu (intrinsic)
• 10. “Betting on Love,” Lynn Painter (intrinsic)