The Book of My Lives
Aleksandar Hemon
27 February 2014
9781447210917Synopsis
From the author of The World and All That It Holds, Aleksandar Hemon's The Book of My Lives is an unforgettable memoir of a life forever marked by international conflict.
Aleksandar Hemon grew up in a blissful Sarajevo, where his childhood was consumed by football, his adolescence by friends, movies and girls and where, as a young man, he poked at the pretensions of his beloved city with American music, bad poetry, and slightly better journalism.
And then, at twenty-seven, Hemon flew to Chicago for a month-long visit. A matter of weeks later Sarajevo was engulfed in an atrocious war. Hemon found himself an exile. He wouldn’t return home for five years and, when he did, he found his city irrevocably changed.
‘If you’ve never read Aleksandar Hemon, prepare to have your worldview deepened’ – Jonathan Safran Foer, author of Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close
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 unforgettableMark Thompson, Independent
