In 1984, two young brothers exiled in the United States return to Guatemala, in the heart of the Altiplano forest, to take part in a survival camp for Jewish children sent by their parents so that they don't forget their roots. But one morning, the children, awakened by screams, discover that the camp has turned into something much darker.
The reasons for and ramifications of this episode in the narrator's childhood will only begin to become clear years later through chance encounters - in Paris with a Salinger reader turned lawyer, or in Berlin with a former chief camp instructor with shifting blue eyes, who walked around with a snake in his pocket and a huge tarantula on his arm.
Interweaving past and present, reality and fiction, Eduardo Halfon weaves a tale teeming with symbols to touch the foundations of his identity: the strict, rigorous framework of the Jewish religion and the enveloping, maternal bosom of Guatemala.

• Published on 12/09/2024
• Genre: Foreign literature
• 208 pages
• Prix Médicis étranger 2024