Tarantula

Guatemalan writer Halfon (Canción) reflects on his time at a nightmarish summer camp in this resonant autofiction. At 13, narrator Eduardo and his younger brother are sent by their parents from Florida to their native Guatemala to attend a remote camp for Jewish students. Expecting to learn a few survival skills and sit around a campfire, Eduardo is shocked and unsettled when they’re subjected to a “military” regimen, complete with hazing, surprise 3 a.m. drills, and Zionist sing-alongs, which he gathers are intended to indoctrinate them into supporting the Israeli state. This disturbing ordeal has stayed with Eduardo, now a writer raising a family in Berlin. He remembers trying to escape, feeling so frightened that “my own shadow was trying to get away, that it no longer wanted to follow me across the mountain.” A chance meeting with a former camper puts him back in touch with their sinister and unapologetic counselor Samuel Blum, who, in Eduardo’s memory, carried a snake in his pocket and a tarantula on his arm. As the dreamlike story shifts back and forth in time, Eduardo confronts a chilling realization about the camp’s abuses and reflects on the effects of inherited trauma and victimhood. It’s a breath of fresh air. (May)