Farrar, Straus and Giroux
March 2013
On Sale: March 19, 2013
224 pages ISBN: 0374115737 EAN: 9780374115739 Kindle: B0096M6MVO Hardcover / e-Book Add to Wish List
Aleksandar Hemonβs lives begin in Sarajevo, a small, blissful city where a young boyβs 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 manβs life is about poking at the pretensions of the cityβs 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 Bookof My Lives, Hemonβs 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 soccerβand 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 readerβa different person, with a new way of looking at the worldβwhen youβve finished. For fans of Hemonβs 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.
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