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| Publisher: | Macmillan |
| Genres: | Nonfiction, Biography & Memoir |
| Authors: | Aleksandar Hemon |
| Pages: | 214 pages |
| ISBN10: | 0374115737 |
| ISBN13: | 9780374115739 |
| Tags: | Nonfiction Books, Memoir Books, Biography Books, Free Download, PDF Download |
| Language: | en |
| Physical Form: | PDF Book |
| Type: |
A Finalist for the National Book Critics Circle Award
For fans of Aleksandar 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's lives begin in Sarajevo, a small, blissful city where a young boy's life is consumed with street soccer with the neighborhood kids, resentment of his younger sister, and trips abroad with his engineer-cum-beekeeper father. Here, 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. And then, his life in Chicago: watching from afar as war breaks out in Sarajevo and the city comes under siege, no way to return home; his parents and sister fleeing Sarajevo with the family dog, leaving behind all else they had ever known; and Hemon himself starting a new life, his own family, in this new city.
And yet this is not really a memoir. The Book of My Lives, Hemon's first book of nonfiction, defies convention and expectation. It is a love song to two different cities; it is a heartbreaking paean to the bonds of family; it is a stirring exhortation to go out and play soccer—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—when you've finished.
A Kirkus Reviews Best Nonfiction Book of 2013
