Tarantula
By Eduardo Halfon (Bellevue Literary Press)

After years living in the United States, Eduardo and his brother return home to Guatemala to attend a Jewish children’s camp, where a promised adventure becomes a sinister game. Years later, Eduardo, now a father in Berlin, reconnects with a fellow camper, who leads him to Samuel Blum, the counselor known for his unsettling behavior.

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Antitherapies
By Jacques Fux and Ilan Stavans  (UNM Press)

Told through 21 playful “anti-therapeutic” sessions, this autofiction debut novel follows a young Jewish man coming of age in Belo Horizonte, Brazil. Though humor and literary allusions, he revisits his journey from childhood to becoming a writer while grappling with assimilation and his Jewish identity.

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The Woman Who Wrote the Bible
By Moacyr Scliar (UNM Press)

During a past-life therapy session, a woman discovers she was one of King Solomon’s 700 wives. Discarded and forgotten in his harem, she has one remarkable advantage: she knows how to read and write. When King Solomon finds out, he charges her with writing what will become one of the most important texts in human history.

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Classics

The Centaur in the Garden
By Moacyr Scliar (University of Wisconsin Press)

Set in the countryside of r of Rio Grande do Sul in Brazil, a centaur named Guedali is born to the Russian Jewish Traskovsky family. He grows up isolated because of his appearance before eventually journeying from Quatro Irmãos to Porto Alegre and Morocco. Blending fable and realism, the novel explores identity, belonging and the tension between individuality and community.

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The Family Tree
By Margo Glantz (Serpent’s Tail)

Originally published in Spanish as Las Genealogías, The Family Tree, a hybrid memoir and family history, author Margo Glantz traces her family’s history, from their origins in Central Europe through their migration to Mexico. Glantz explores family, identity and what it means to build a life in a new country.

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The Jewish Gauchos of the Pampas (Los gauchos judíos)
By Alberto Gerchunoff  (UNM Press)

You can’t talk about Jewish Latin American Literature without mentioning the Jewish Gauchos of the Pampas, a collection of vignettes about shtetl life in Argentina. Originally published in 1910, the book portrays the encounters between Jewish settlers and the local culture of rural Argentina.  Among the stories included is  The Poet, about a man named Favel.

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Against the Inquisition
By Marcos Aguinis (Author), Carolina De Robertis (Translator) (Amazon Crossing)

In 16th-century Argentina, Francisco Maldonado da Silva grows up in a family that practices Judaism in secret after the Inquisition arrests his father. His pursuit of education and medicine as well as a reunion with his father leads him on an epic journey to confront religious persecution and fight openly for his faith and freedom.

Purchase the book here.

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Courtney Shapiro is the Assistant Digital Editor for Hadassah Magazine. She has written for Woman’s World, First for Women and Best Life. Follow her on Instagram for book recommendations, reviews and more.