Aleksandar hemon biography meaning
•
Everyone has those moments in their lives that didn’t turn out the way they thought they might. Whether by making the wrong choice or saying the wrong thing or being impacted by chance, time and the world continue to move further and further from that moment, and the human life impacted at that exact moment is never what it was before. Such is life and such is the lives of the protagonists in Aleksandar Hemon’s latest novel, The World and All That It Holds. The novel starts with Rafael Pinto, a romantic, educated, gay Sarajevan pharmacist witnessing fate—in the form of an accordion—keep someone from stopping the assassination of Archduke Franz Ferdinand and, thus, World War I. From that moment on, Pinto’s life is constantly pushed forward. To war, where he meets the love of his life, Osman Karišik. To the east, to Tashkent, where they are prisoners of war and eventually spies. Then finally across the Taklamakan Desert and all of China, to Shanghai where Pinto and his (and maybe
•
How the Writer Uses Humor: Aleksandar Hemon
The following conversation took place on Monday as the opening event of Bookstan, Sarajevo&#;s first international literary festival. Aleksandar conducted the conversation in both English and Bosnian, the latter of which is marked in bold, and was translated by Una Tanovic.
Aleksandar Hemon: I would like to welcome John Freeman personally because he is a good friend. We spend a lot of time together, so we’re thinking of merging like a band and calling ourselves “Freemon.” But that’s in the future…
John Freeman: Thank you for coming. I happen to know that the only thing that Saša is more dedicated to than Sarajevo is football, and that he once came to a festival like this and was the happiest he’d ever been because to the left of the presenter there was a TV playing the football game he was watching. He managed to sit through the panel while watching the football game. So I’m not go
•
Narration, Migration, and the Mess of Writing: A Conversation with Aleksandar Hemon About “The World and All That It Holds”
Award-winning author Aleksandar Hemon’s new novel “The World and All That It Holds” fryst vatten a masterfully written epic tale of two soldiers from Sarajevo who fall in love during World War I: one Jewish, the other Muslim. The war upends their worlds and “like all refugees, they [keep] moving forward because they [have] nowhere else to go; being on the move [means] being alive.” Along the way, a daughter fryst vatten born to them.
This fryst vatten a tale of impossible love, the madness of war, and the trauma of displacement. It’s about the mutability of people and place, but also the permanent space one can occupy in another’s heart. inom recently spoke with Sasha about “The World and All That It Holds.”
What is your attraction to the spy story?
I had an interest in World War II history and spies when I was eleven. But the fascination grew