Monkey Boy— Francisco Goldman

Like a late winter blizzard, memories rush into the mind of Francisco (Frankie) Goldberg, the protagonist of this story, as he travels by train from New York to Boston, his hometown. Forced to return to North America as a consequence of fierce political persecution, the marked distance he has built from his family suddenly vanishes. Now he goes to meet his mother, his sister, a interrupted school love, and also the scars that growing up in the American Northeast leaves on a child of a Russian Jewish father and a Guatemalan Catholic mother.

Moving, amusing, and unsettling in equal measure, Monkey Boy unfolds a web of temporalities that makes evident the impossibility of an unchangeable past, while highlighting the omissions with which we construct the stories we tell about ourselves. In this novel, Francisco Goldman has written a brilliant reflection and a clear X-ray of the individual and collective identity of a country that, like many, is inhabited by people of multiple geographical and cultural origins. But, above all, this book is a celebration of female strength, without which navigating the most turbulent childhoods would be practically impossible.

No. Pages: 384 / Dimensions: 21.5 cm (Height) x 14.5 cm (Width)

ISBN: 9786078851140