Aleksandar Hemon

A first full-length work by the MacArthur Award-winning author of the story collections The Question of Bruno and Nowhere Man finds the murder of Jewish immigrant Lazarus Averbuch triggering ethnic and political tensions in early twentieth-century Chicago, an event that is investigated a century later by a young writer from Eastern Europe.

The Lazarus Project

Hemon’s one of the best. I’m obsessed with everything that happened in former Yugoslavia during the 90s and it all leads back to reading The Book of My Life, which isn’t even four pages, in freshman creative writing. Unblinking scrutiny over injustice on every level, everywhere, past and present, from state violence to tabloid wordplay (embedding the language of that ass-backward account of Averbuch’s murder is just a stroke of ingenuity). Never didactic, never sarcastic, always moving. And mastery of American English expression to boot — his second language, no less, a fact which I’ve gone from deeply admiring to being just blown back by. And what a stunning final exchange. “Something is always true.”

Alex Noble

Trevor Berrett

Not the best pick for the National Book Award. For my complete review, go here:

http://mookse.wordpress.com/2008/10/2...

A kabel 

A beautifully rendered reevaluation of a previously misunderstood chapter in the history of immigration to America--which is to say, in the history of America itself--Hemon's work describes and defines what it means to be a new citizen in this land--"Miami Herald."

The Lazarus Project

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