Books by Aleksandar Hemon

A combined book of two magnificent works by Aleksandar Hemon, presented together in a reversible single edition: the story of his parents' emigration from Sarajevo, and a book of short memories of the author's family, friends and childhood.

Aleksandar Hemon grew up in a blissful Sarajevo, where his childhood was consumed by football, his adolescence by friends, movies and girls and where, as a young man, he poked at the pretensions of his beloved city with American music, bad poetry, and slightly better journalism. And then at twenty-seven Hemon flew to Chicago for a month-long visit. A matter of weeks later Sarajevo was engulfed in an atrocious war and Hemon found himself an exile - he wouldn't return home for five years, and when he did, he found his city irrevocably changed.

'If there is a more inspired writer of fiction than Aleksandar Hemon currently at work in English, I haven't read him. Startlingly fresh and original . . . Read and rejoice' GQ The explosive perils of adolescence, a country falling apart, the overwhelming vertigo of striking out abroad: this is life in which love is only one of many obstacles. From Sarajevo to the darkest heart of Africa, deepest Slovenia, and the melting pot of Chicago, this brilliant and restlessly inventive collection is shot through with humour and truth - found in the most surprising of places. 'Eccentric, witty and alive with compassion' Observer 'Much of the wonder here is in his swaggeringly supple prose, which is by turns delectably lavish and blunt . . . Some of the richest delights in contemporary fiction, as well as some of the best jokes' Guardian 'Crackles with wit and dances with invention' Independent 'Infinitely vibrant and alive' Financial Times

'You will go a long way to find anything better than this' Edward Docx 'There is simply more history and more drama in Hemon's stories than in a shelf and a half of the usual dayglo Anglo-American entertainment' Guardian The Question of Bruno is an elegy for the vanished Yugoslavia and a journey through the intertwined history of a family and a nation, written in prose of unparalleled daring, invention and wit. 'Amazing. The personal fall-out of political failure has never been so searing' Time Out 'Like Nabokov, Hemon writes with the startling peeled vision of the outsider, weighing words as if for the first time; he shares with Kundera an ability to find grace and humour in the bleakest of circumstances' Observer 'A storyteller, funny and sad in equal measure, and always entertaining' Scotland on SundayThe Question of Bruno is an elegy for the vanished Yugoslavia and a journey through the intertwined history of a family and a nation, written in prose of unparalleled daring, invention and wit.