Aleksandar Hemon

From the celebrated author of the bestselling Lazarus Project "a dazzling collection of stories ... further cementing Hemon's] position among the finest fiction writers working in English" (GQ). The stories of Aleksandar Hemon's Love and Obstacles are united by their narrator, a young man coming of age in Communist-but-cosmopolitan Sarajevo who will leave for the United States just as his city is torn asunder. In Hemon's hands, seemingly mundane childhood experiences become daring, dramatic adventures, while unique and wrenching circumstances become a common ground that involves us all. As cohesive and impressive as any novel, the short story collection Love and Obstacles stands with the National Book Award finalist The Lazarus Project as the best work of this MacArthur Genius Award winner's career. From the author of The Book of My Lives.

‘Some of the richest delights in contemporary fiction, as well as some of the best jokes’ – GuardianFrom the prize-winning author of The World and All That It Holds, Aleksandar Hemon, Love and Obstacles is a stunningly original collection of short fiction. The explosive perils of adolescence, a country falling apart, the overwhelming vertigo of striking out abroad: this is life in which love is only one of many obstacles. From Sarajevo to the darkest heart of Africa, deepest Slovenia, and the melting pot of Chicago, this brilliant and restlessly inventive collection is shot through with humour and truth – found in the most surprising of places.‘Infinitely vibrant and alive’ – Financial Times

‘His language sings . . . I should not be surprised if Hemon wins the Nobel Prize at some point’ – Giles Foden, author of The Last King of ScotlandThrough shifting narration and beautifully original prose, Nowhere Man sees Aleksandar Hemon return to the story of Jozef Pronek – through childhood, political upheaval and new life as an immigrant. In Aleksandar Hemon’s electrifying first story collection, 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. Through a series of vignettes and across the great expanse of life, Nowhere Man startles us into yet more exhilarating ways of seeing the world anew.‘Sheer exuberance, generosity and engagement with life’ – Sunday Times

From the author of The World and All That It Holds, Aleksandar Hemon's stunning debut The Question of Bruno is a collection of beautifully told yet polically-charged short fiction. In this elegy for the vanished Yugoslavia, Hemon's stories journey through the intertwined history of a family and a nation, writing in prose of unparalleled daring, invention and wit. This collection features the novella Blind Jozef & Dead Souls, as a young immigrant to the United States watches while his homeland of Sarajevo falls to a violent siege.‘Like Nabokov, Hemon writes with the startling peeled vision of the outsider, weighing words as if for the first time; he shares with Kundera an ability to find grace and humour in the bleakest of circumstances’ – Observer

The only novel from MacArthur Genius Award winner, Aleksandar Hemon -- the National Book Critics Circle Award winning The Lazarus Project. 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, often compared to Vladimir Nabokov, as one of the most dynamic and essential literary voices of our time. From the author of The Book of My Lives.

A native of Sarajevo, where he spends his adolescence trying to become Bosnia's answer to John Lennon, Jozef Pronek comes to the United States in 1992--just in time to watch war break out in his country, but too early to be a genuine refugee. Indeed, Jozef's typical answer to inquiries about his origins and ethnicity is, "I am complicated." And so he proves to be--not just to himself, but to the revolving series of shadowy but insightful narrators who chart his progress from Sarajevo to Chicago; from a hilarious encounter with the first President Bush to a somewhat more grave one with a heavily armed Serb whom he has been hired to serve with court papers. Moving, disquieting, and exhilarating in its virtuosity, Nowhere Man is the kaleidoscopic portrait of a magnetic young man stranded in America by the war in Bosnia.

”Nowhere Man” är Beatleslåten som Jozef Pronek och hans kamrater i bandet Bube (=serbokroatiska för Beatles) spelar på skoldanserna och så småningom på studentklubben Kuk i Sarajevo. Bube eftersom KGB inte skulle gå hem i väst och FBI (Fucking Boys International) inte skulle gå hem i öst när det begav sig på 80-talet. När Pronek tio år senare återfinner sig som en malplacerad Nowhere Man i amerikansk exil hör ”Nowhere Man” till hans jugoslaviska nostalgi, allas vårt Yesterday. Nowhere Man skulle man också kunna kalla den osynlige men överallt närvarande berättare, Proneks skugga, som iakttar och skriver boken om Proneks kameleontliknande uppenbarelse, än som juvenil författare till raderna ”Vad är det som sticker fram ur mig/ som en tumör en vacker dag”, än som dörrknackare i Greenpeaces tjänst, än som den som med Thomas Mann som tillhygge vänder sig mot berättaren som likt en mus övervakat honom. ALEKSANDAR HEMON (född 1964) kom till USA som turist 1992 men blev kvar där sedan hans hemstad Sarajevo belägrats. Han debuterade som engelskspråkig författare 2000 med Frågan om Bruno, på svenska i Panacheserien samma år.

In this stylistically adventurous, brilliantly funny tour de force-the most highly acclaimed debut since Nathan Englander's-Aleksander Hemon writes of love and war, Sarajevo and America, with a skill and imagination that are breathtaking. A love affair is experienced in the blink of an eye as the Archduke Ferdinand watches his wife succumb to an assassin's bullet. An exiled writer, working in a sandwich shop in Chicago, adjusts to the absurdities of his life. Love letters from war torn Sarajevo navigate the art of getting from point A to point B without being shot. With a surefooted sense of detail and life-saving humor, Aleksandar Hemon examines the overwhelming events of history and the effect they have on individual lives. These heartrending stories bear the unmistakable mark of an important new international writer.

Aleksandar Hemons debutbok består av en kvasivetenskaplig avhandling om mästerspionen i Tokyo under andra världskriget Richard Sorge*, redogörelser för leksakerna som Aleksandars pappa hade med sig hem från sina många mystiska resor en grå bil (Volga), ett olivgrönt plastgevär med röd ammunition, en uppsättning telegrafnycklar ¿ och diverse osorterade minnesbilder ¿ den lilla hundvalpen Sorges tragiska död t ex**)¿ samt utsmugglade brev inifrån det belägrade Sarajevo. Dessa till synes disparata men underfundigt sammanfogade texter om familjelivet bakom järnridån i Jugoslavien, skuggat av det förestående kriget, och så småningom det dråpligt skildrade förspelet till ett författarskap i amerikansk förskingring kan påminna om Danilo Kis melankoliska rosakataloger fast med Vladimir Nabokovs lekfullhet. Aleksandar Hemon (född 1964) kom till USA som turist 1992, men blev kvar där sedan hans hemstad Sarajevo belägrats. Debutboken från våren 2000 skrev han på engelska. * tillika en berättelse om Aleksandars far Peter Hemon** döpt efter Richard Sorge.