Aleksandar Hemon: Personal Pieces

Bosnia Dept: Hemon offers a roughly chronological series of highly personal pieces. They run from his childhood in Bosnia, to his debauchery-rich young-adult existence in the last days of the former Yugoslavia, to his expat exile in Chicago, and finally to his settling into Americanized domesticity as a husband and father, according to Winnipeg Free Press. Some of the pieces overlap, some don't. But they all showcase his talent as an essayist. Hemon is better known as a novelist. His novels include the Beatles-inspired title Nowhere Man 2002 and The Lazarus Project 2008 and BOSNIAN-AMERICAN writer Aleksandar Hemon's latest title suggests it's a memoir. It's not, but the essay collection nonetheless nicely delivers on what the title implies. As a young man he led an "exhaustingly messy existence" in Sarajevo while running afoul of Communist state-security forces. Just as war broke out in Bosnia, he escaped to Chicago, where he, initially, led an exhaustingly depressing existence. (www.immigrantscanada.com). As reported in the news.