You need to sign in or sign up before continuing.
Take a photo of a barcode or cover
4.11 AVERAGE
4.11 AVERAGE
Şehrin havası sönmüş, esriklik hali bitkin düşmüştü. Bir gece Olimpik Müze'nin kafesine gittim Eskiden orada çok takılırdık. Gözleri camlaşmış insanların birbirleriyle hemen hiç konuşmadan korkunç uzaklara dalıp gitmesini seyrettim; kimileri fena halde uyuşturucu çekmiş, kimileri doğal olarak felce uğramıştı; hepsi de artık inkar edilemez olanın karşısında dehşet içindeydi: Bitmişti.
Savaş gelmişti ve artık hepimiz kimin yaşayacağını, kimin öldüreceğini ve kimin öleceğini görmek için bekliyorduk.
//
Kitabı "dramatik" kelimesiyle özetlesem yanlış bir tanım olmaz bence; hazmetmesi bazen kolay bazen zor ve ironik bir şekilde çok kolay okunuyor.
Aynı temada öyle çok okuma yapıyorum ki, bazen rüyalarımda bile yıkımı görüyorum.
Savaş gelmişti ve artık hepimiz kimin yaşayacağını, kimin öldüreceğini ve kimin öleceğini görmek için bekliyorduk.
//
Kitabı "dramatik" kelimesiyle özetlesem yanlış bir tanım olmaz bence; hazmetmesi bazen kolay bazen zor ve ironik bir şekilde çok kolay okunuyor.
Aynı temada öyle çok okuma yapıyorum ki, bazen rüyalarımda bile yıkımı görüyorum.
Saraybosna’dan Amerika’ya, kayıplarla çizilmiş hayatını muazzam bir şekilde anlatıyor Hemon. İronik bir dil batta zaman zaman mizahla gölgelemeye çalışsa da anlattığı her bir anı canımı acıttı. Akvaryum ise kalbime kazındı.
Only my own ignorance of the Bosnian war in the 1990s kept me from fully enjoying this memoir. I spent a lot of time on Wikipedia trying to keep up! The last third focuses a little more on his time as a new US immigrant, and that is much more accessible.
I very rarely pick up a book by an author from the general area of ex-Yugoslavia, even more rarely - a book which, for the most part, deals with the war and subsequent dislocation. This is something which is probably due to my own qualms about the period - having both experienced it (if chronology is to be believed, as I tend to do - I was born in 1990 when the shit hit the proverbial fan) and not really experienced it at all (as my current, adult self would).
My memories of Bosnia and later, the war in Croatia where we'd moved as refugees when I was at the ripe age of 2 and a half (I think the half adds distinction to what I might remember from the time before the move, which is to say - nothing) - are mostly confabulations pieced together from what my parents and assorted family members had told me about the "before". Needless to say - for anyone who has read Hemon's book - these stories were mostly mired in hyperbole and though magical to me at 3,4,5 or 6, I'd grown weary of them by the time I "seriously" started reading and did not want to engage with what I thought would be more of the same. That is to say, I didn't want to read about all the wonderful stuff I'd supposedly missed out on, by being too young to remember, but too old still not to have some sort of illusory connection to this supposed past.
Why am I writing about myself in a review for a book on Goodreads? Good question. I think what Hemon did for me, personally, in the essays that start this book, was marrying this idea of a utopia, such as sometimes slips out when he talks about Sarajevo, and which definitely slipped out when my family talked about Banjaluka, where life was full of characters with strange, endearing peculiarities and was at least quirky and good-enough if not perfect (definitely in comparison of what was to come) with a point of view I could relate to, one that didn't deny life's progression - sometimes beautiful, but with the potential to again be (even more) heartbreaking. He gave me a short glimpse, retroactively as it inevitably had to be, into the experience of that world that I might've had, since I found I had a lot in common with his wry, often cynical and almost always bemusedly removed outlook on the situations he found himself in. (I would've been the first to attend, if I had lived in that time, an ill-advised "artistic" birthday party with a controversial theme.)
Having said that, I don't know how to review this book without referring back to myself and my own, very different, life trajectory (so I decided not to, as is evident). Would this book be interesting to someone who has little knowledge about the Bosnian war and Yugoslavia more generally? I can't tell. I would venture to say yes, because a lot of its themes are also about growing up, one's relationship with one's family, and especially in the last essay - a sorrow that is unimaginable, yet universal. Hemon writes with an abundance of wit and character, reading it is almost like sitting down in a small neighborhood cafe with a good pal who is recounting the last couple of decades of their life over a beer or two, both of you cocooned in a thick, protective blanket of smoke. At least this is how I imagined it when reading the book, and in deed, how I mostly read it, too. The structure lends itself well to sporadic reading as well, since it's comprised of essays which have previously been published (in somewhat different editions) in various magazines, so you don't have to actively keep track of what's going on to be able to pick it up later. However, if you devour them almost as one as I have, they do flow into one another and read like a story. Of course, as anyone who's sat down at a table to have drinks with a person they haven't seen in a long time - there are inevitable digressions and tangents that might seem puzzling at first, but overall add to the experience of getting to know a person, or a story, or a person through a story. I suppose that's the tallest order you can make of a memoir and The Book of My Lives delivers in heaps.
My memories of Bosnia and later, the war in Croatia where we'd moved as refugees when I was at the ripe age of 2 and a half (I think the half adds distinction to what I might remember from the time before the move, which is to say - nothing) - are mostly confabulations pieced together from what my parents and assorted family members had told me about the "before". Needless to say - for anyone who has read Hemon's book - these stories were mostly mired in hyperbole and though magical to me at 3,4,5 or 6, I'd grown weary of them by the time I "seriously" started reading and did not want to engage with what I thought would be more of the same. That is to say, I didn't want to read about all the wonderful stuff I'd supposedly missed out on, by being too young to remember, but too old still not to have some sort of illusory connection to this supposed past.
Why am I writing about myself in a review for a book on Goodreads? Good question. I think what Hemon did for me, personally, in the essays that start this book, was marrying this idea of a utopia, such as sometimes slips out when he talks about Sarajevo, and which definitely slipped out when my family talked about Banjaluka, where life was full of characters with strange, endearing peculiarities and was at least quirky and good-enough if not perfect (definitely in comparison of what was to come) with a point of view I could relate to, one that didn't deny life's progression - sometimes beautiful, but with the potential to again be (even more) heartbreaking. He gave me a short glimpse, retroactively as it inevitably had to be, into the experience of that world that I might've had, since I found I had a lot in common with his wry, often cynical and almost always bemusedly removed outlook on the situations he found himself in. (I would've been the first to attend, if I had lived in that time, an ill-advised "artistic" birthday party with a controversial theme.)
Having said that, I don't know how to review this book without referring back to myself and my own, very different, life trajectory (so I decided not to, as is evident). Would this book be interesting to someone who has little knowledge about the Bosnian war and Yugoslavia more generally? I can't tell. I would venture to say yes, because a lot of its themes are also about growing up, one's relationship with one's family, and especially in the last essay - a sorrow that is unimaginable, yet universal. Hemon writes with an abundance of wit and character, reading it is almost like sitting down in a small neighborhood cafe with a good pal who is recounting the last couple of decades of their life over a beer or two, both of you cocooned in a thick, protective blanket of smoke. At least this is how I imagined it when reading the book, and in deed, how I mostly read it, too. The structure lends itself well to sporadic reading as well, since it's comprised of essays which have previously been published (in somewhat different editions) in various magazines, so you don't have to actively keep track of what's going on to be able to pick it up later. However, if you devour them almost as one as I have, they do flow into one another and read like a story. Of course, as anyone who's sat down at a table to have drinks with a person they haven't seen in a long time - there are inevitable digressions and tangents that might seem puzzling at first, but overall add to the experience of getting to know a person, or a story, or a person through a story. I suppose that's the tallest order you can make of a memoir and The Book of My Lives delivers in heaps.
emotional
reflective
sad
tense
challenging
emotional
reflective
sad
medium-paced
http://winterlief.blogspot.nl/search/label/het%20boek%20van%20mijn%20levens
Hemon's writing has that enchanting mix of nostalgia, empathy and Balkan fatalistic humor - the wonderful defense mechanism which enables us to carry through the hardships of life by laughing at its absurdity. Recounting his multiple lives - before, during and after the Balkan wars, as both a young man in an idyllic pre-war Sarajevo and, later, as the displaced refugee seeking a new home in Chicago, he takes us with him on a cinematic journey of melancholy, tragedy, survival and love.
Uneven, some parts brilliant (I particularly liked his essays on immigrants and the chapter on soccer players), other less so, the last one is heart-breaking. Overall a solid 3 stars.
Favourite quotes:
The funny thing is that the need for collective self-legitimization fits snugly into the neoliberal fantasy of multiculturalism, which is nothing if not a dream of a lot of others living together, everybody happy to tolerate and learn. Differences are thus essentially required for the sense of belonging: as long as we know who we are and who we are not, we are as good as they are.
Sometimes, if a team was a player short, he’d referee and play simultaneously. In such a situation, he was particularly hard on himself and once gave himself a yellow card for a rough tackle. We—immigrants trying to stay afloat in this country—found comfort in playing by the rules we set ourselves.
We’d play and I’d lose, each and every time. My mother objected to his never letting me win, as she believed that children needed to experience the joy of victory to succeed. Father, on the other hand, was ruthlessly firm in his conviction that everything in life had to be earned and that wanting victory always helped achieve it.
Favourite quotes:
The funny thing is that the need for collective self-legitimization fits snugly into the neoliberal fantasy of multiculturalism, which is nothing if not a dream of a lot of others living together, everybody happy to tolerate and learn. Differences are thus essentially required for the sense of belonging: as long as we know who we are and who we are not, we are as good as they are.
Sometimes, if a team was a player short, he’d referee and play simultaneously. In such a situation, he was particularly hard on himself and once gave himself a yellow card for a rough tackle. We—immigrants trying to stay afloat in this country—found comfort in playing by the rules we set ourselves.
We’d play and I’d lose, each and every time. My mother objected to his never letting me win, as she believed that children needed to experience the joy of victory to succeed. Father, on the other hand, was ruthlessly firm in his conviction that everything in life had to be earned and that wanting victory always helped achieve it.
One of the best books I’ve read! A collection of stories of the different lives of the author — from the childhood in Sarajevo, to the experience of finding his place in Chicago.
His writing style is SO GOOD my book is full of highlighted parts. I’ve LOVED how he organizes and chooses the words when building the sentences, it transforms a simple information into something magical.
I cannot recommend this book enough. You MUST read it!!
His writing style is SO GOOD my book is full of highlighted parts. I’ve LOVED how he organizes and chooses the words when building the sentences, it transforms a simple information into something magical.
I cannot recommend this book enough. You MUST read it!!