The Lazarus Project | Aleksandar Hemon

The Lazarus Project | Aleksandar Hemon | A surprise

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The Lazarus Project

	The Lazarus Project Aleksandar Hemon Riverhead Hardcover, 2008 - 304 pages average customer review:based on 10 reviews view larger image
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In two collections of stories, The Question of Bruno and the NBCC-finalist Nowhere Man, Aleksandar Hemon has earned unmatched literary acclaim and a reputation as one of the English language?s most original and moving wordsmiths. In The Lazarus Project, Hemon has turned these talents to an embracing novel that intertwines haunting historical atmosphere and detail with sharp and shimmering?sometimes hilarious, sometimes heartbreaking?contemporary storytelling.

On March 2, 1908, nineteen-year-old Lazarus Averbuch, a recent Jewish immigrant from Eastern Europe to Chicago, knocked on the front door of the house of George Shippy, the chief of Chicago police. When Shippy came to the door, Averbuch offered him what he said was an important letter. Instead of taking the letter, Shippy shot Averbuch twice, killing him. When Shippy released a statement casting Averbuch as a would-be anarchist assassin and agent of foreign political operatives, he all but set off a city and a country already simmering with ethnic and political tensions.

Now, in the twenty-first century, a young writer in Chicago, Brik, also from Eastern Europe, becomes obsessed with Lazarus?s story?what really happened, and why? In order to understand Averbuch, Brik and his friend Rora?who overflows with stories of his life as a Sarajevo war photographer?retrace Averbuch?s path across Eastern Europe, through a history of pogroms and poverty, and through a present-day landscape of cheap mafiosi and cheaper prostitutes. The stories of Averbuch and Brik become inextricably entwined, augmented by the photographs that Rora takes on their journey, creating a truly original, provocative, and entertaining novel that will confirm Hemon once and for all as one of the most dynamic and essential literary voices of our time.

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Amazing!

Read this book and see things in a different way. Read this book and enjoy the wonder of beautiful prose.

A surprise

I don't write reviews often, but I felt compelled to do so for this book . As said before, the Lazarus Averbuch affair is interwoven with a strange modern-day odyssey into various cities in Eastern Europe in search of answers. What's really special about this book and what made me really crazy for it was the language. Read it and see for yourself. Some expressions and phrases are so effective and so original that they made the narrative many times more colorful than it already is.

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Wonderful combination of two tales across continents and time

The Lazarus Project starts in medias res; "The time and place, are the only things I am certain of: March 2, 1908, Chicago. Beyond that is the haze of history and pain, and now I plunge." Aleksandar Hemon masterfully interweaves two stories in this book. The first and most gripping one is the killing of the young Jewish immigrant Lazarus Averbuch. Lazarus escaped the 1903 Kishinev pogrom, only to get shot by the Chicago chief of police in 1908 (see the website of the Jewish historical society for some historical background). It is not clear why the young Lazarus was shot. What is beyond doubt, however, is that turn of the century Chicago was marked by civil unrest following the Haymarket riots. Xenophobia abounded and cool heads did not always prevail. Hemon sketches a very delicate and intimate portrait of the life of Averbuch's sister following the loss of her brother.
The second narrative is the contemporary story of Vladimir Brik, also an immigrant from Eastern Europe in Chicago. Almost a century after Lazarus,however, Chicago is a very different city. Vladimir is writing a story on Lazarus but the reader gets the impression most of his energy is dedicated to finding some peace with his newly acquired and very comfortable life in the US. Using some grant money, he decides to travel to Eastern Europe to shed some light on Lazarus's life before arriving in Chicago. Hemon also displays his skills in the second story, as a he lightens up Vladimir's despair and little idiosyncrasies with a lot of humor.

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reviews: page 1, 2

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