Eduar­do Hal­fon was born in Guatemala in 1971. His lat­est book, Mourn­ing, was a final­ist for the Kirkus Prize, and won the Inter­na­tion­al Lati­no Book Award and the Edward Lewis Wal­lant Award, a dis­tinc­tion pre­sent­ed annu­al­ly to a writer whose fic­tion is con­sid­ered to have sig­nif­i­cance for Amer­i­can Jews.