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“Entertaining
stories about Sarajevo? Weirdly droll and heartbreaking, this debut
volume deftly anatomizes a world gone wrong.”
— Newsweek
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“The
Yugoslavian-born author came to the United States on vacation but was forced to
stay when his country erupted in war. In this collection of stories, political
reality is driven into everyday life like a wedge or—just as often—a knife. The
most straightforward pieces benefit immensely from the fact that English is not
Hemon’s native language. Like Conrad’s, his prose often makes the most of
emphatically discordant notes: an initially incongruous word comes to seem a
perfect choice.”
— New Yorker
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“So good as to make the reader feel certain of having
discovered not just an extraordinary story but an extraordinary writer: one who
seems not simply gifted but necessary.”
— New York Times Book Review
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“The man is a maestro…As vivid a prose as you
will find anywhere this year, and as heartbreaking.”
— Esquire
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“An inventive and thorny collection of interlocking
narratives that has the jarring immediacy of autobiography, as if Hemon were
brandishing a handheld video camera at the inchoate episodes of his life. But
his artful anarchic jump-cutting is firmly grounded by the undeniable heft of
history…Whether pondering the coldblooded craft of Sarajevo’s snipers or
offering a Proustian joke, Hemon has an impeccable ear for the mundane ironies
and bleak compromises elicited by extraordinary events.”
— Los Angeles Times
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“That eerie
half-world in which small personal dramas play out against shattering current
events is the territory of Aleksandar Hemon’s assured first short-story
collection, The Question of Bruno—a debut all the more impressive
because the author, a native of Sarajevo, only recently learned English. Before
the comparisons to Nabokov and Conrad start coming, however (and odds are
they’ll come fast and furious), know this: Hemon is an original voice, and he
has imagination and talent all his own…[Grade:] A.”
— Entertainment Weekly
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“It is surely
no coincidence that the name of Joseph Conrad, another European exile whose
native language is not English, is alluded to several times in Hemon’s often
thrilling debut collection, The Question
of Bruno. There could hardly be a better ancestor-mentor invoked. Hemon’s
memoir-like stories and one novella here tell us much about the horrors of war,
the confusions of identity, and the no-less-perplexing business of creating a
new life in a country not your own.”
— Newsday
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“Like Nabokov, Hemon writes with the startling peeled vision
of the outsider, weighing words as if for the first time; he shares with
Kundera an ability to find grace and humor in the bleakest of circumstances. In
part his book is a history lesson, but it is history felt on a human pulse. He
imagines his way back into the troubled soul of his home city and tells its
tales from within.”
— Observer (London)
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“By turns terrifying, gently comic, and brutally
satiric, these are stunning stories that compel the reader to view a world
rendered…abruptly alien and unfamiliar.”
— San Francisco Chronicle
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“The book’s language is rich, complex, sharply intelligent,
and frequently funny—a pleasant surprise for readers of new fiction, and all
the more astonishing considering Hemon wrote it in English, his second language.”
— Time Out New York
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“Expertly wrought…Generously endowed with pathos, humor, and
irony, and written in an off-balance, intoxicating English, this collection
announces a talent reminiscent of the young Josef Skvorecky.”
— Publishers Weekly (starred review)
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“Hemon’s writing is sensible, with a hint of satire, and is
heavily based on wistful description rather than farfetched dialogue…This is
the work of a rare talent who deserves our attention.”
— Library Journal