num_pages: 224
description: Aleksandar Hemon's lives begin in Sarajevo a small blissful city where a young boy's life is consumed with street soccer with the neighborhood kids resentment of his younger sister and trips abroad with his engineer-cum-beekeeper father. Here a young man's life is about poking at the pretensions of the city's elders with American music bad poetry and slightly better journalism. And then his life in Chicago: watching from afar as war breaks out in Sarajevo and the city comes under siege no way to return home; his parents and sister fleeing Sarajevo with the family dog leaving behind all else they had ever known; and Hemon himself starting a new life his own family in this new city.And yet this is not really a memoir. The Book of My Lives Hemon's first book of nonfiction defies convention and expectation. It is a love song to two different cities; it is a heartbreaking paean to the bonds of family; it is a stirring exhortation to go out and play soccerand not for the exercise. It is a book driven by passions but built on fierce intelligence devastating experience and sharp insight. And like the best narratives it is a book that will leave you a different readera different person with a new way of looking at the worldwhen you've finished. For fans of Hemon's fiction The Book of My Lives is simply indispensable; for the uninitiated it is the perfect introduction to one of the great writers of our time.A Kirkus Reviews Best Nonfiction Book of 2013
language: English
title: The Book of My Lives
publisher: Farrar, Straus and Giroux