Hemon presents two books in one: My Parents (An Introduction) tells the story of Hemon’s parents’ immigration to Canada—of the lives that were upended by the war in Bosnia and siege of Sarajevo and the new lives his parents were forced to build. As ever with his work, he portrays both the perfect, intimate details (his mother’s lonely upbringing, his father’s fanatical beekeeping) and a sweeping, heartbreaking history of his native country. This Does Not Belong to You, meanwhile, is the exhilarating, freewheeling, unabashedly personal companion to My Parents—a perfect dose of Hemon at his most dazzling and untempered in a series of beautifully distilled memories and observations and explosive, hilarious, poignant miniatures.
Aleksandar Hemon is the author of the novels The Lazarus Project, which was a finalist for the 2008 National Book Award and the National Book Critics Circle Award, and The Making of Zombie Wars. He is also the author of three award-winning collections of short stories--The Question of Bruno, Nowhere Man, and Love and Obstacles--and the nonfiction book The Book of My Lives. He was the recipient of a 2003 Guggenheim Fellowship and a “genius grant” from the MacArthur Foundation.
