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A review by dune_huken
The Lazarus Project by Aleksandar Hemon
3.0
Glad to have read a book that celebrates and criticizes –– and overall just lives in –– Chicago. I swoon seeing street and neighborhood names on the page.
At first I was worried this would be a naval-gazing book about trying to write the book you're holding in your hands. Hemon is more clever than that – he uses his story of the wrongful and libelous murder of a Jewish immigrant at the turn of the century as a backdrop for a surrogate Bosnian author trying to make sense of that story. What could come off as self-indulgent is actually a difficult and intricate series of unanswered questions about immigrant identity, the notion of home, and the violence that chases people out of their homelands but cruelly and ironically amplifies once they reach the land of the free.
My only question is: were the news reports in the Lazarus sections real, or at least based on real articles? The hyperbolic racism and American grandstanding come off as unsubtle and clunky -- unless that's how the newspapers really wrote about immigrants and anarchists. If that's the case, I mean, Jesus.
But, that's a minor gripe. This is a dark and thoughtful – and funny – book. In one passage, Hemon sets up a joke, one among several in the book, that are more profound than they are funny. Mujo, the Bosnian immigrant who made a life for himself in America, convinces his friend Suljo to come over to the US as well. He drives Suljo around, showing him the businesses, properties, and cars he owns. They pull up to a house.
"See that house? That's my house, Mujo says... See that woman? That's my wife. And those children are my children.
"Very nice, Suljo says. But who is that brawny, suntanned young man massaging your wife?
Well, Mujo says, that's me."
At first I was worried this would be a naval-gazing book about trying to write the book you're holding in your hands. Hemon is more clever than that – he uses his story of the wrongful and libelous murder of a Jewish immigrant at the turn of the century as a backdrop for a surrogate Bosnian author trying to make sense of that story. What could come off as self-indulgent is actually a difficult and intricate series of unanswered questions about immigrant identity, the notion of home, and the violence that chases people out of their homelands but cruelly and ironically amplifies once they reach the land of the free.
My only question is: were the news reports in the Lazarus sections real, or at least based on real articles? The hyperbolic racism and American grandstanding come off as unsubtle and clunky -- unless that's how the newspapers really wrote about immigrants and anarchists. If that's the case, I mean, Jesus.
But, that's a minor gripe. This is a dark and thoughtful – and funny – book. In one passage, Hemon sets up a joke, one among several in the book, that are more profound than they are funny. Mujo, the Bosnian immigrant who made a life for himself in America, convinces his friend Suljo to come over to the US as well. He drives Suljo around, showing him the businesses, properties, and cars he owns. They pull up to a house.
"See that house? That's my house, Mujo says... See that woman? That's my wife. And those children are my children.
"Very nice, Suljo says. But who is that brawny, suntanned young man massaging your wife?
Well, Mujo says, that's me."