ALEKSANDAR HEMON, THE

BOOK OF MY LIVES (2013)

Such is the sentence-level
virtuosity of Aleksandar
Hemon—the Bosnian-American
writer, essayist, and critic—that
throughout his career he has
frequently been compared to
the granddaddy of borrowed
language prose stylists:
Vladimir Nabokov. While it is,
of course, objectively
remarkable that anyone could
write so beautifully in a
language they learned in their
twenties, what I admire most
about Hemon’s work is the way
in which he infuses every essay
and story and novel with both a
deep humanity and a controlled
(but never subdued) fury. He
can also be damn funny.
Hemon grew up in Sarajevo and
left in 1992 to study in Chicago,
where he almost immediately
found himself stranded, forced
to watch from afar as his
beloved home city was
subjected to a relentless four-
year bombardment, the longest
siege of a capital in the history
of modern warfare. This
extraordinary memoir-in-essays
is many things: it’s a love letter
to both the family that raised
him and the family he built in
exile; it’s a rich, joyous, and
complex portrait of a place the
90s made synonymous with
war and devastation; and it’s an
elegy for the wrenching loss of
precious things. There’s an
essay about coming of age in
Sarajevo and another about
why he can’t bring himself to
leave Chicago. There are stories
about relationships forged and
maintained on the soccer pitch
or over the chessboard, and
stories about neighbors and
mentors turned monstrous by
ethnic prejudice. As a chorus
they sing with insight, wry
humor, and unimaginable
sorrow. I am not exaggerating
when I say that the collection’s
devastating final piece, “The
Aquarium”—which details his
infant daughter’s brain tumor
and the agonizing months
which led up to her death—
remains the most painful essay
I have ever read. –Dan
Sheehan, Book Marks Editor