The Book of My Lives

Description

Aleksandar Hemon's lives begin in Sarajevo, a small, blissful city where a young boy's life is consumed by football, by resentment of his younger sister, and by occasional trips abroad with his engineer-cum-beekeeper father; and where 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. Yet this is not really a memoir. It is a lovesong to Sarajevo and to Hemon's adopted Chicago; it is a heartbreaking paean to the bonds of family; it is a stirring exhortation to go out and play football - 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. 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.

Aleksandar Hemon is the author of the prize-winning The Lazarus Project, as well as Nowhere Man and The Question of Bruno. Born in Sarajevo, Hemon has lived in Chicago since 1992, and wrote his first story in English in 1995. He was awarded a Guggenheim Fellowship and a 'genius grant' from the MacArthur foundation in 2004.

Aleksandar Hemon is, quite frankly, the greatest writer of our generation. His literature is deep, agile, funny, graceful, searing, angry, raw, questioning. It is of present and eternal use . . . This is a book - like all of Aleksandar Hemon's books - that is an aria for our times. I will cherish it. -- Colum McCann, author of Let the Great World Spin The Book of My Lives is written with the full force of humanity. It will make you think, laugh, cry, and remember yourself. If you've never read Aleksandar Hemon, prepare to have your worldview deepened. -- Jonathan Safran Foer, author of Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close The essays in The Book of My Lives are about the meaning of home. Spacious and full-hearted . . . the last chapters break ground where fiction has no place . . . Confessional yet honourably restrained, these pages promise to be unforgettable -- Mark Thompson * Independent * Hemon's work crackles with so much humor and irony, so much compassion and humanity, that The Book of My Lives' true calling almost goes by unnoticed: it is, without doubt, the most necessary, intimate and heartbreaking portrait of a world lost to one of history's darkest conflicts. -- Tea Obreht, author of The Tiger's Wife We find this . . . beautifully, horrible resolve in The Book of My Lives, the first collection of nonfiction by MacArthur "genius" grant-winning writer Aleksandar Hemon * Baltimore City Paper * Hemon chronicles with defining intensity, rueful self-critique, and piquant humor indelible revelations personal, cultural, and political. He is passionate . . . writes with deft force, piercing observation, and commanding candor about the individual's place within life's web and the horrors and beauty of the human condition * Booklist * In happiness there is alienation, and in sadness there is humor. Combined with Hemon's mad storytelling skills, The Book of My Lives is a powerful collection. * Boswell Book Company * Aleksandar Hemon has been telling critically acclaimed stories for years . . . In his latest collection, The Book of My Lives, he tells his own stories . . . in such a way that it could take its place on the shelf of great Chicago literature . . . The universal truths found in his memoir feel all the more powerful for being grounded in his own, sometimes painfully real, life. * Chicago Tribune * Hemon manages to write about his own younger days in a way that makes them both uniquely his own, but also universal . . . [Hemon] evokes a magical city of random gorgeous images and events . . . Hemon is engaging and interesting company, and the story of his life - or lives - is one worth telling. * Christian Science Monitor * I'm not quite sure Aleksandar Hemon counts as an American writer, but he is one of my favorite American writers. Before The Book of My Lives, I never really thought of him as a nonfiction person, but this new book - a memoir in essays - has some of his best writing. When Hemon's work is funny, it can make you laugh in spite of everything, and when it is sad, it's hard to stand up afterward -- John Jeremiah Sullivan, author of Pulphead Incandescent. When your eyes close, the power of Hemon's colossal talent remains -- Junot Diaz, author of This is How You Lose Her An acclaimed novelist - winner of a MacArthur Foundation genius grant and finalist for the National Book Award - returns with an affecting memoir about his youth in Sarajevo and his escape and adjustment to the West . . . The chapters, in fact, could in many ways stand alone. But their cumulative emotional power - accelerated by a wrenching final section about the grievous illness of his younger daughter - eventually all but overwhelms. Amuses, informs and inspires - then, finally, rips open the heart. * Kirkus Reviews * It's at once unimaginable and unforgettable . . . With Hemon, says the writer Jonathan Lethem, 'above all and no matter the topic or register, it's the voice -- that glowering intelligence pulsing behind a truly glittering surface . . .' * Time * Aleksandar Hemon . . . is often praised for his inventive use of language . . . he can articulate what he likes with equal passion and precision . . . These events of his lives are by turns funny, intense, poignant and sad - in other words, great memoir material . . . Hemon is a virtuoso linguist, maker of gorgeous sentences and arguably the best writer to currently call Chicago home. * Time Out Chicago * Literary badass Aleksandar Hemon . . . is known for biting irony, humor, and humanity in his novels and stories . . . The rawness of those elements also rings through his first book of nonfiction, The Book of My Lives. * Village Voice * A deft, playful, poignant and powerful look at the novelist's life, in Yugoslavia and New York -- Books of the Year * Sunday Times *