2.25.2015

Aleksandar Hemon - 'Nowhere Man'

This was Hemon's first novel, published in 2002. It's the third book of his I've read but it's the first that has really showed me how brilliant of a writer he is. Within the first few pages I was hooked and didn't want to put it down. There are so many great lines. Here's a few that stick out from just the first few pages:
  • "...listening to the mizzle in my pillow,"
  • "The blinds gibbered..."
  • "The toilet bowl was agape, with a dissolving piece of toilet paper in it throbbing like a jellyfish."
  • "The faucet was sternly counting off droplets."
  • "Smashing the boxes was my favorite part, the controlled, benign destruction."
  • (about a cat, eating a mouse)..."patiently exposing its crimson essence."
  • "...a grimace of perplexed horror..."
  • "...despair was my loyal ally."
  • "...on a steel beam high up above perched a jury of pigeons, cooing peevishly."
His use of similes, adverbs and other modifiers, particularly with smell, offer a unique perspective, often accompanied by a morbid Eastern European sense of humor. Even without context, his sentences spring to life.

More than that, he was not afraid to take risks. The book is told through multiple perspectives from (generally) unnamed narrators about one man's life, Jozef Pronek. This character follows a path that many of Hemon's characters do: displaced immigrants from Bosnia that somehow make their way to Chicago, and work the various oddjobs, and suffer similar psychological torments that his other protagonists (including himself in his memoir) suffer.

I'm greatly looking forward to his new book out later this year, The Making of Zombie Wars, which he read a little bit at the Chicago Humanities Festival. I'm also still grateful that he answered some questions I'd sent him in one of the most thoughtfully answered interviews I've ever been a part of.

BONUS: here's some Beatles for ya, of which the title of the book takes its name from.

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