The Polish Boxer

“The Polish Boxer” is a book I picked up after coming across a list of books from the blog “A Year of Reading the World.” I, too, had been thinking about finding ways to diversify points of view in the books I read when I came across the blog. It is also a topic that is spoken about regularly by the students at Shimer College, where I currently work, and also in my Great Books book club; it can be challenging to find all of the “Great Books,” even if they aren't officially noted as such. And this is one book that should certainly be considered in that category.

What is this book? Is it a set of short stories or linked snapshots of important events in a man's life? Is it semi-autobiographical or is the author playing with the audience? Did the synopsis on the back of this book make me want to not read this book? But, once I started the book, did I find myself drawn into and born away the swirling smoke of the fictional Halfon's cigarettes? Yes!

In fact, the blocks of unaccounted-for time between stories, the lack of resolution about the meaning of gypsy pirouettes, the embedded dialogue, and the globe-traveling stories could, in the wrong hands, be obnoxious and frustrating, but are handled beautifully by Mr. Halfon. The author wove together each story to frame the true (or not true?) story that his grandfather was saved in Auschwitz by the advice of a Polish boxer, who the grandfather never saw again. All of these hijinks play with the idea of whether literature is true, is always masking another tale (true or not), and what is real and not real in everyday life; the entire novel plays with the idea of what is reliable. Is Milan Rakic Gypsy or Serb? Did a Polish boxer or something else save Halfon's grandfather in the concentration camp? Does a disgruntled literature professor find every moment tedious or is he moved by the talent of one student that he travels out to the countryside to try to understand why the student has suddenly left school?

Interestingly, five translators brought this Guatemalan novel into English; either they are very magical people or they all were able to sing with Halfon's voice such that the final product is cohesive. I do not have the talent to read this book in Spanish, but I hope to cajole my brother or a Guatemalan friend to read the book in its native language and then read it in English to see whether the translators did as marvelous a job as I suspect they have. Also, I can only hope that more of Mr. Halfon's works become available in English translations!