My Parents: An Introduction / This Does Not Belong to You - Softcover

Hemon, Aleksandar

Softcover

ISBN 10: 1529038464 ISBN 13: 9781529038460

Publisher: Picador, 2019

Synopsis

Two magnificent memoirs by Aleksandar Hemon, presented together in a glorious single edition: together they make a major work from one of our major writers.

In My Parents, Aleksandar Hemon tells the story of his parents’ immigration to Canada – of the lives that were upended by the war in Bosnia and siege of Sarajevo, and the new lives his parents were forced to build. He portrays both the perfect, intimate details (his mother’s lonely upbringing, his father’s fanatical beekeeping) and a sweeping, heartbreaking history of his native country. It is a story full of many Hemons, of course – his parents, sister, uncles, cousins – and also of German occupying forces, Yugoslav partisans, royalist Serb collaborators, singing Ukrainians, and a few befuddled Canadians. My Parents is grounded in stories lovingly polished by retelling, but made thrilling and fresh in writing, summoning unexpected laughs in the midst of the heartbreaking narratives.

This Does Not Belong to You, meanwhile, is the exhilarating, freewheeling, unabashedly personal companion to My Parents – a perfect dose of Hemon at his most dazzling and untempered in a series of beautifully distilled memories and observations about his family, friends and childhood in Sarajevo, presented as explosive, hilarious, poignant miniatures.

Together these two books complement each other and form a major work from a major writer. Hemon has never been better than here and the moment has never been more ready for his voice, nor has the world ever been more in need of it.

About this title

Review

Aleksandar Hemon is, quite frankly, the greatest writer of our generation. -- Colum McCann

Hemon at his most contemplative, whimsical, and personal . . . a joy, Los Angeles Times

Gorgeous . . . The writing contains both immediacy and a thrillingly historical long view . . . There is all the love and frustration here that anyone feels for their aging parents . . . [and] some of the best writing about what it really feels like to be a child that I can recall reading., Newsday

Not only is Hemon's book a masterpiece in literary terms, it is also a repudiation of the idea of the immigrant as a singular and infantilized creature, a human of lesser depth and complexity than everyone else. -- Rafia Zakaria, TLS

Hemon’s recollections unite his dazzling prose style with a captivating personal narrative., Publishers Weekly

Hemon’s newest, most delving nonfiction work . . . Bracing candor, gruff tenderness, righteous anger, and political astuteness, all conveyed with Hemon’s signature intensity, mordant wit, and creative bite., Booklist

About the Author

Aleksandar Hemon was born in Sarajevo and lives in Chicago. He is the author of The Question of Bruno, Nowhere Man, Love and Obstacles, and The Lazarus Project, which was a finalist for both the National Book Award and the National Book Critics Circle Award. His work also appears regularly in the New Yorker and Granta, among other publications.

About this edition

• Publisher: Picador
• Publication date: 2019
• ISBN 10: 1529038464
• ISBN 13: 9781529038460
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 368