description: Following his critically acclaimed short story collection, The Question of Bruno , Aleksandar Hemon's debut novel Nowhere Man confirms that an important new voice has arrived. Unlike other Eastern European coming-of-age novels, Nowhere Man bucks chronological order, spanning the 1990s and sometimes reading like a memoir. Jozef Pronek, who grew up dreaming of hitting it big with his Beatles cover band, wanders through his adopted Chicago while the Bosnia conflict rages on, working as a process server and for Greenpeace, where he meets his girlfriend, Rachel. Jozef spends time in Kiev with American graduate students, such as the uncannily depicted Will, "blonde and suburbanly ... [as if his] family procreated by fission," and Vivian, "pale and in need of a carrot or something." He rooms with Victor Plavchuk, a conflicted doctoral student in literature who develops a crush on Jozef (and who is reminiscent of a subdued Charles Kinbote from Vladimir Nabokov's Pale Fire ). Jozef is sublimely complex, embodying the listlessness and frank practicality of expatriates whose homeland is being shredded by violent conflict. Jozef wonders, "Why couldn't he be more than one person? Why was he stuck in the middle of himself, hungry and tired?" while a woman "[keeps] her hands in the pockets of her formerly blue jacket, as if despair were a marble in her pocket." Hemon's wit is also "The only thing that distinguished Pronek in school was that he never, ever volunteered to do anything." Nowhere Man is a somber, saddening, yet vibrant and warm debut novel. --Michael Ferch
language: German
title: Nowhere Man.
titlecomplete: Nowhere Man.
genres: The United States Of America, Literature, Literary Fiction, Contemporary, 21st Century, Modern, Short Stories, Novels, Fiction, Classics
ratings_count: 2504
places: Chicago, Illinois, Sarajevo
awards: awardedAt: 1009872000000
name: Los Angeles Times Book Prize
category: Fiction, awardedAt: 1009872000000
name: National Book Critics Circle Award
category: Fiction, awardedAt: 1041408000000
name: Society of Midland Authors Award
category: Adult Fiction
publisher: Knaus Albrecht