FINALIST FOR THE 2022 PULITZER PRIZE FOR FICTION 2022 AMERICAN BOOK AWARD WINNER "Painful, refractive, beautiful . . . Goldman is beloved."— New York Review of Books In Monkey Boy , Francisco Goldman’s “brilliantly constructed auto-fiction” (NPR), we meet Francisco Goldberg, a middle-aged writer grappling with the challenges of family and love, legacies of violence and war, and growing up as the son of immigrants—a Guatemalan Catholic mother and a Russian Jewish father—in a predominantly white, working-class Boston suburb. Told in an irresistibly funny, tender and passionate voice, this extraordinary portrait of family explores the pressures of living between worlds. Our narrator, Francisco Goldberg, an American writer, has been living in Mexico when, because of a threat provoked by his journalism, he flees to New York City, hoping to start afresh. His last relationship ended devastatingly five years before, and he may now finally be on the cusp of a new love with a young Mexican woman he meets in Brooklyn. But Francisco is soon beckoned back to his childhood home outside Boston by a high school girlfriend who witnessed his youthful humiliations, and to visit his Guatemalan mother, Yolanda, whose intermittent lucidity unearths forgotten pockets of the past. On this five-day trip, the specter of Frank’s recently deceased father, Bert, an immigrant from Ukraine – pathologically abusive, yet also at times infuriatingly endearing ― as well as the dramatic Guatemalan woman who helped raise him, and the high school bullies who called him “monkey boy,” all loom. Told in an intimate, irresistibly funny, and passionate voice, this extraordinary portrait of family and growing up “halfie,” unearths the hidden cruelties in a predominantly white, working-class Boston suburb where Francisco came of age, and explores the pressures of living between worlds all his life. Monkey Boy is a new masterpiece of fiction from one of the most important American voices in the last forty years. Finalist for the 2022 Pulitzer Prize in Fiction Winner of the American Book Award NAMED ONE OF THE BEST BOOKS OF THE YEAR BY NPR, Boston Globe , Kirkus Reviews , AND Washington Independent Review of Books A New York Times New and Noteworthy Book Longlisted for the 2023 Joyce Carol Oates Prize "An autofictional inquiry into the protean nature of identity, written with disarming candor and grace, blending memory and imagination to transformational effect." — 2022 Pulitzer Prize Fiction Jury “An enrapturing novel, a Proustian trip through one man’s life and memory, as well as the violent history of colonization that binds the Americas…Goldberg’s most finely observed subject is himself, rendered with empathy and skepticism, intimacy and distance, tenderness and resignation.” — Viet Thanh Nguyen, American Book Award Citation “[A] story that travels relentlessly between a difficult present and an unfinished past… In this case, bringing together the child and the seasoned adult may involve a kind of spiritual revolution, a casting off of the past by a reliving of it, a turn in the middle years toward a different way of being… he must change his life...At the heart of the novel’s own tenacity and optimism is Frankie’s mother, his mamita, Yolanda Montejo…her gaiety and crooked, defiant spirit... Monkey Boy steadily becomes a moving and tender elegy for a woman who seems to have spent most of her life suspended warily between visceral love of her birthplace and learned gratitude for her adopted home.” —James Wood, New Yorker “Brilliantly constructed auto-fiction … Goldman writes with humor and honesty as he unpacks some of America’s senseless racial politics and deconstructs one family’s volatile, cross cultural history. The result is a family portrait that is funny, loving and fierce, all at the same time.” —Martha Anne Toll, NPR “A book about, and also by, a writer journeying across space but also back in time, at least in his mind, to the places that made him… [A] painful, refractive, beautiful book.” — Joshua Jelly-Schapiro, New York Review of Books “Francisco Goldman’s new novel, Monkey Boy … is positively boiling over with original metaphors and insights… he’s a writer of real force and originality…with rare vitality and humor… This book is about all these women, and how alive they are, but not just as presences who appear and speak for themselves. It’s also about how vivid these women are in the mind, and in the interior life, of the narrator… a connoisseur of female strength and eccentricity.” ―Rachel Kushner, Literary Hub “Goldman is a master writer—In  Monkey Boy , he leaves nothing at bay, attending to the most important questions facing our nation and the most gentle questions turning in our hearts. It is a book, like any journey across vast distances, that we cannot help but commit to imperfect, passionate memory. “ —Ricardo Frasso Jaramillo, The Believer “Goldman’s voice and storytelling powers have never been