Love and Obstacles - Softcover

Hemon, Aleksandar

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0330510908 ISBN 13: 9780330510905

Publisher: Picador, 2009

Synopsis

Set in the darkest heart of Africa, in deepest Slovenia, in the melting pot of Chicago and in Hemon's native Sarajevo, this brilliant collection of stories crackles with curiosity and irrepressible energy. Linked by a young narrator who, like the author, was raised in Yugoslavia and emigrated to the United States, the world the stories create is one of restlessness: of adolescent boys who can't quite be men, failed poets, `accomplished' alcoholics and striving families. Recalling the surreal and salient experiences of a life - not least in the narrator's ill-fated expedition across Yugoslavia by night train to acquire a freezer chest and dispose of his virginity - each is exhilarating, surprising, cut through with humour, pathos and insight. As ever, Hemon confronts pain without blanching but finds delicious absurdity in experience. His is the great humanity of a writer who cares for what otherwise might go unrecorded, and gives voice to what he sees in a style that is breathtakingly his own. `Hemon is a world-class writer of seismic depth, riptide humour, wine-dark language, and unflinching candour' Booklist `Writing with steely control and an antic eye, Hemon arranges words like gems in a necklace. Another extraordinary work' Publishers Weekly

About this title

Review:

`With guile and gusto, these eight stories abound in beautifully oblique sidelong and backwards glances at the genocidal war in Hemon's Bosnian homeland. Hemon - the refugee genius, Sarajevo-born, stranded in Chicago in 1992, hand-to-mouth survivor of America's worst jobs - sends up the familiar myth of himself. Rueful and self-disparaging, retelling each mishap in a prose that fizzes with dark wit, the narrator often warns about the risks of confusing art and life. The nearest we get to the front-line of Bosnia's tragedy comes in a comic allegory of school kids who try to recapture a "garden of freedom" - fable just as ferocious as Lord of the Flies, but much funnier.'
--Boyd Tonkin, Independent

Book Description:

An electrifying masterclass in international storytelling from one of the most original writers at work in English today

About this edition

• Publisher: Picador
• Publication date: 2009
• ISBN 10: 0330510908
• ISBN 13: 9780330510905
• Binding: Paperback