Aleksandar

Aleksandar Hemon’s new novel is immense. Not because it is inordinately long – it isn’t – but because it contains almost as much as its title promises: journeys that take years, and lives that span continents; falling empires and storied cities; so many wars they blur and merge in the characters’ memories; indelible loves, unbearable losses; dreams and songs and megalomaniac delusions; witty allusions, rude jokes. By turns lyrical and sardonic, it is as emotionally compelling as it is clever. I’ll be surprised if I enjoy…

Aleksandar Hemon, 58, was born in Sarajevo and lives in New Jersey. His diverse output includes The Lazarus Project (2008), a novel drawing on the 1908 shooting of a Jewish migrant by Chicago police; the autobiographical essay collection The Book of My Lives (2013), which discusses the death of Hemon’s second child; and the screenplay for The Matrix Resurrections, co-written with Lana Wachowski and David Mitchell. His new book, The World and All That It Holds, is a century-spanning, cross-continental polyglot gay romance…