Aleksandar Hemon's lives begin in Sarajevo, a small, blissful city where a young boy's life is consumed with street soccer with the neighborhood kids, resentment of his younger sister, and trips abroad with his engineer-cum-beekeeper father; a young man's life is about poking at elder pretensions with American music, bad poetry, and slightly better journalism. And then, his life in Chicago: watching from afar as war breaks out and the city comes under siege; his parents and sister fleeing Sarajevo, leaving behind all they had ever known; and Hemon himself starting a new life in this new city. And yet this is not really a memoir--Hemon's first book of nonfiction defies convention and expectation. It is a love song to two different cities; it is a paean to the bonds of family; it is an exhortation to go out and play soccer--and not for the exercise. It is a book driven by passions but built on fierce intelligence, devastating experience, and sharp insight. And like the best narratives, it is a book that will leave you a different person, with a new way of looking at the world.--From publisher description.
Record details
ISBN:9780374115739 (hc.)
ISBN:0374115737 (hc.)
Physical Description:print viii, 214 p. ; 22 cm.
Edition:1st ed.
Publisher:New York : Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2013.
Content descriptions
Formatted Contents Note:
The lives of others -- Sound and vision -- Family dining -- The Kauders case -- Life during wartime -- The magic mountain -- Let there be what cannot be -- Dog lives -- The book of my life -- The lives of a flaneur -- Reasons why I do not wish to leave Chicago : an incomplete, random list -- If God existed, He'd be a solid midfielder -- The lives of grandmasters -- The kennel life -- The aquarium.