Zombies and slapstick signal a change of tone in a surprising follow-up to the Bosnian-born author’s memoir The Book of My LivesMy heart always sinks a bit when someone says I should read abook because it’s well written. Praising a book for the writing alone is like recommending a restaurant where the food is well seasoned,or supporting afootball team because they are generous at corner kicks. But it can’t be denied that Aleksandar Hemon – by the way, a keen amateur footballer – is a gifted crafter of sentences. His books are replete with the kind of memorable phrases that reviewers cherry-pick and offer to the reader. Here is an assortment from his new novel: a cat purring is “revving his little pleasure engine”; a character presses “his face against the window in the parenthesis of his hands”; elsewhere, or “leafless tree crowns scrambled the early morning light”.
These quick-witted nuggets are all the more surprising for being written by someone who was born in Sarajevo and didn’t start writing in English until adulthood. Having sought asylum in the US from the war in his native Bosnia,Hemon has addressed the subjects of war, identity and dislocation in his preceding novels, and short stories and memoir. Like many a transplanted writer before him,he finds himself in exile from the world that formed him.
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Source: theguardian.com