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Riverhead Hardcover
May 2009
On Sale: May 14, 2009
224 pages
ISBN: 1594488649
EAN: 9781594488641
Hardcover
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Non-Fiction
Aleksandar Hemon earned his reputationβ and his MacArthur βgenius grantββfor his short stories, and he returns to the form with a powerful collection of linked stories that stands with The Lazarus Project as the best work of his celebrated career. A few of the stories have never been published before; the others have appeared in The New Yorker, and several of those have also been included in The Best American Short Stories. All are infused with the dazzling, astonishingly creative prose and the remarkable, haunting autobiographical elements that have distinguished Hemon as one of the most original and illustrious voices of our time. What links the stories in Love and Obstacles is the narrator, a young man whoβlike Hemon himselfβwas raised in Yugoslavia and immigrated to the United States. The stories of Love and Obstacles are about that coming of age and the complicationsβthe obstaclesβof growing up in a Communist but cosmopolitan country, and the disintegration of that country and the consequent uprooting and move to America in young adulthood. But because itβs Aleksandar Hemon, the stories extend far beyond the immigrant experience; each one is punctuated with unexpected humor and spins out in fabulist, exhilarating directions, ultimately building to an insightful, often heartbreaking conclusion. Woven together, these stories comprise a book that is, genuinely, as cohesive and powerful as any fictionβ achingly human, charming, and inviting.
 Media BuzzTell Me More - August 17, 2009
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