Aleksandar Hemon

Jozef Pronek, un joven crítico de rock, lleva en Chicago una vida de nómada al borde de la nada, recorriendo el circuito de los trabajos basura ofrecidos a los inmigrantes. Hemon nos desliza por el tobogán del tiempo a la adolescencia de Jozef en el Sarajevo de los años setenta, donde tenía una banda de rock; nos lleva a Kiev, donde había ido a visitar a su abuelo, y conoció a George Bush (padre); asistimos a sus hilarantes, gozosos, primeros encuentros con el sexo; a su humillante experiencia como soldado; a su vida cuando aún podía ser un hombre de algún lugar. Pero ¿quién es realmente Jozef Pronek, ahora, en los años noventa? ¿Por qué ambiguos narradores construyen a Pronek a la manera de un cuadro cubista de múltiples facetas?

'Aleksandar Hemon has established himself as that rare thing, an essential writer. Another small act of defiance against this narrowing world' - Observer 'His language sings...I should not be surprised if Hemon wins the Nobel Prize at some point' - Giles Foden. In Aleksandar Hemon's electrifying first book, The Question of Bruno" Jozef Pronek left Sarajevo to visit Chicago in 1992, just in time to watch war break out at home on TV. Unable to return, he began to make his way in a foreign land and his adventures were unforgettable. Now Pronek, the accidental nomad, gets his own book, and startles us into yet more exhilarating ways of seeing the world anew. 'If the plot is mercury, quick and elusive, sentence by sentence and word for word, Aleksandar Hemon's writing is gold' - Times Literary Supplement 'Downbeat but also hilarious, while the writing itself is astonishing' - Time Out 'Hemon can't write a boring sentence, and the English language is the richer for it' - New York Times 'Sheer exuberance, generosity and engagement with life' - Sunday Times

Aleksandar Hemon's lives begin in Sarajevo, a small, blissful city where a young boy's life is consumed with street soccer with the neighborhood kids, resentment of his younger sister, and trips abroad with his engineer-cum-beekeeper father. Here, a young man's life is about poking at the pretensions of the city's elders with American music, bad poetry, and slightly better journalism. And then, his life in Chicago: watching from afar as war breaks out in Sarajevo and the city comes under siege, no way to return home; his parents and sister fleeing Sarajevo with the family dog, leaving behind all else they had ever known; and Hemon himself starting a new life, his own family, in this new city. And yet this is not really a memoir. The Book of My Lives, Hemon's first book of nonfiction, defies convention and expectation. It is a love song to two different cities; it is a heartbreaking paean to the bonds of family; it is a stirring exhortation to go out and play soccer—and not for the exercise. It is a book driven by passions but built on fierce intelligence, devastating experience, and sharp insight. And like the best narratives, it is a book that will leave you a different reader—a different person, with a new way of looking at the world—when you've finished. For fans of Hemon's fiction, The Book of My Lives is simply indispensable; for the uninitiated, it is the perfect introduction to one of the great writers of our time.A Kirkus Reviews Best Nonfiction Book of 2013

On March 2, 1908, nineteen-year-old Lazarus Averbuch, an Eastern European Jewish immigrant, was shot to death on the doorstep of the Chicago chief of police and cast as a would-be anarchist assassin. A century later, a young Eastern European writer in Chicago named Brik becomes obsessed with Lazarus's story. Brik enlists his friend Rora -- a war photographer from Sarajevo -- to join him in retracing Averbuch's path. Through a history of pogroms and poverty, and a prism of a present-day landscape of cheap mafiosi and even cheaper prostitutes, the stories of Averbuch and Brik become inextricably intertwined, creating a truly original, provocative, and entertaining novel that confirms Aleksandar Hemon as one of the most dynamic and essential literary voices of our time.

The World and All That It Holds--in all its hilarious, heartbreaking, erotic, philosophical glory--showcases Aleksandar Hemon's celebrated talent at its pinnacle. It is a grand, tender, sweeping story that spans decades and continents. As the Archduke Franz Ferdinand arrives in Sarajevo one June day in 1914, Rafael Pinto is busy crushing herbs and grinding tablets behind the counter at the pharmacy he inherited from his estimable father. It's not quite the life he had expected during his poetry-filled student days in libertine Vienna, but it's nothing a dash of laudanum from the high shelf, a summer stroll, and idle fantasies about passersby can't put in perspective. And then the world explodes. In the trenches in Galicia, fantasies fall flat. Heroism gets a man killed quickly. War devours all that they have known, and the only thing Pinto has to live for are the attentions of Osman, a fellow soldier, a man of action to complement Pinto's introspective, poetic soul; a charismatic storyteller; Pinto's protector and lover. Together, Pinto and Osman will escape the trenches, survive near-certain death, tangle with spies and Bolsheviks. Over mountains and across deserts, from one world to another, all the way to Shanghai, it is Pinto's love for Osman--with the occasional opiatic interlude--that keeps him going.

Велична, ніжна історія, що охоплює десятиліття і континенти. Одного червневого дня 1914 року, коли до Сараєва прибуває ерцгерцог Франц Фердинанд, а Рафаель Пінто зайнятий роботою у батьковій аптеці, світ вибухає. Рафаель не готовий ні до війни, ні до служби в армії. А проте він має йти на фронт. Десь в окопах серед Галичини його фантазії остаточно руйнуються. Війна зовсім не схожа на студентські будні у розпусному Відні, літні прогулянки чи замріяні вечори. Єдине, що тримає Рафаеля на фронті, — любов до свого побратима Османа. Осман на противагу поетичному Рафаелю не має жодних ілюзій щодо війни, він сміливий і завзятий. З ним можна наважитися на будь-що, навіть на втечу з фронту. Чи вдасться закоханим здійснити таку авантюру? І чи врятує їх любов на шляху до свободи? Чому варто прочитати книжку «Світ і все, що в ньому є»? Карколомна любовно-еротична історія про війну, яка охоплює десятиліття та континенти, відтворена крізь призму ЛГБТК(ІА+). Александар Гемон вважається одним із найсміливіших голосів у художній літературі.