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The World and All That It Holds
The World and All That It Holds--in all its hilarious, heartbreaking, erotic, philosophical glory--showcases Aleksandar Hemon's celebrated talent at its pinnacle. It is a grand, tender, sweeping story that spans decades and continents.
As the Archduke Franz Ferdinand arrives in Sarajevo one June day in 1914, Rafael Pinto is busy crushing herbs and grinding tablets behind the counter at the pharmacy he inherited from his estimable father. It's not quite the life he had expected during his poetry-filled student days in libertine Vienna, but it's nothing a dash of laudanum from the high shelf, a summer stroll, and idle fantasies about passersby can't put in perspective.
And then the world explodes. In the trenches in Galicia, fantasies fall flat. Heroism gets a man killed quickly. War devours all that they have known, and the only thing Pinto has to live for are the attentions of Osman, a fellow soldier, a man of action to complement Pinto's introspective, poetic soul; a charismatic storyteller; Pinto's protector and lover.
Together, Pinto and Osman will escape the trenches, survive near-certain death, tangle with spies and Bolsheviks. Over mountains and across deserts, from one world to another, all the way to Shanghai, it is Pinto's love for Osman--with the occasional opiatic interlude--that keeps him going.
As the Archduke Franz Ferdinand arrives in Sarajevo one June day in 1914, Rafael Pinto is busy crushing herbs and grinding tablets behind the counter at the pharmacy he inherited from his estimable father. It's not quite the life he had expected during his poetry-filled student days in libertine Vienna, but it's nothing a dash of laudanum from the high shelf, a summer stroll, and idle fantasies about passersby can't put in perspective.
And then the world explodes. In the trenches in Galicia, fantasies fall flat. Heroism gets a man killed quickly. War devours all that they have known, and the only thing Pinto has to live for are the attentions of Osman, a fellow soldier, a man of action to complement Pinto's introspective, poetic soul; a charismatic storyteller; Pinto's protector and lover.
Together, Pinto and Osman will escape the trenches, survive near-certain death, tangle with spies and Bolsheviks. Over mountains and across deserts, from one world to another, all the way to Shanghai, it is Pinto's love for Osman--with the occasional opiatic interlude--that keeps him going.
352 pages, Hardcover
First published January 24, 2023
About the author
Aleksandar Hemon
64 books841 followersHemon graduated from the University of Sarajevo with a degree in literature in 1990. He moved to Chicago, Illinois in 1992 and found that he was unable to write in Bosnian and spoke little English.
In 1995, he started writing works in English and managed to showcase his work in prestigious magazines such as the New Yorker and Esquire. He is the author of The Lazarus Project, which was a finalist for the 2008 National Book Award and the National Book Critics Circle Award, and three books of short stories: The Question of Bruno; Nowhere Man, which was also a finalist for the National Book Critics Circle Award; and Love and Obstacles. He was the recipient of a 2003 Guggenheim Fellowship and a “genius grant” from the MacArthur Foundation. He lives in Chicago.
In 1995, he started writing works in English and managed to showcase his work in prestigious magazines such as the New Yorker and Esquire. He is the author of The Lazarus Project, which was a finalist for the 2008 National Book Award and the National Book Critics Circle Award, and three books of short stories: The Question of Bruno; Nowhere Man, which was also a finalist for the National Book Critics Circle Award; and Love and Obstacles. He was the recipient of a 2003 Guggenheim Fellowship and a “genius grant” from the MacArthur Foundation. He lives in Chicago.
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Displaying 1 - 29 of 392 reviews
December 25, 2022
Aleksandar Hemon gallops right up to the line dividing "perfect" from "overwritten" but he never steps over it. Every sentence is so lush and so rich. It took some getting used to. It was like falling in love when I didn't want to but in the end I had no choice. It's rococo writing. It's full of filigrees and flourishes. I fell in love with each wavy swirling sentence--the way each sentence always manage to fit in one more perfect clause before the period came along. I read this book in electronic ARC while also listening to the audiobook. I adored the narrator of the audiobook, Aleksandar Mikic--what a talent!--but I also loved reading the words on the page at the same time, so that I had a view of the hills and valleys of the sentences as they came along. I appreciated having both audio and print versions handy, as I read, where they could reflect and refract one another in my brain. This is rich writing. It required a few channels into my thoughts and feelings for me to fully engage with it.
There are so many specific scenes that took my breath away. So many varied moods. One aspect I particularly loved in the novel were the wrenchingly beautiful lovemaking scenes between men--scenes that are full of desire, but also, great gentleness. They were a little gauzy. There was a romantic sheen on the writing that fit the story so well and made me realize how rarely I've read scenes where two men get to be gentle and romantic with one another, vs having a more visceral physical experience on the page...and I thought it was great.
There are so many specific scenes that took my breath away. So many varied moods. One aspect I particularly loved in the novel were the wrenchingly beautiful lovemaking scenes between men--scenes that are full of desire, but also, great gentleness. They were a little gauzy. There was a romantic sheen on the writing that fit the story so well and made me realize how rarely I've read scenes where two men get to be gentle and romantic with one another, vs having a more visceral physical experience on the page...and I thought it was great.
January 17, 2023
“The World and All That It Holds” would be an audacious title for a book by anybody except God — or Aleksandar Hemon. But this Bosnian American author will make you a believer.
Born in Sarajevo, Hemon has lived in the United States since the 1992 war decimated his homeland. Writing in English — his adopted language — he’s attracted an adoring critical following but not the popular audience he deserves. In 2004, he won a MacArthur “genius” grant, and his 2008 novel, “The Lazarus Project,” was a finalist for a National Book Award. The comparisons to Nabokov are not outlandish.
Hemon’s charismatic new novel wends its way across Europe and Asia during the first half of the 20th century, taking in the world and, yes, all that it holds. This is the story of humanity’s most cataclysmic era, but the perspective has been pulled away from historical headlines to embrace instead those ordinary souls unloosed from their disintegrating countries and sent to wander the globe.
That sounds awfully grim, I know, and there’s plenty of horror in these fiery pages, but the irrepressible voice of “The World and All That It Holds” glides along a cushion of poignancy buoyed by wry humor. From start to finish, no matter what else he’s up to, Hemon is telling a tale about the resilience of true love. . . .
To read the rest of this review, go to The Washington Post:
https://www.washingtonpost.com/books/...
Born in Sarajevo, Hemon has lived in the United States since the 1992 war decimated his homeland. Writing in English — his adopted language — he’s attracted an adoring critical following but not the popular audience he deserves. In 2004, he won a MacArthur “genius” grant, and his 2008 novel, “The Lazarus Project,” was a finalist for a National Book Award. The comparisons to Nabokov are not outlandish.
Hemon’s charismatic new novel wends its way across Europe and Asia during the first half of the 20th century, taking in the world and, yes, all that it holds. This is the story of humanity’s most cataclysmic era, but the perspective has been pulled away from historical headlines to embrace instead those ordinary souls unloosed from their disintegrating countries and sent to wander the globe.
That sounds awfully grim, I know, and there’s plenty of horror in these fiery pages, but the irrepressible voice of “The World and All That It Holds” glides along a cushion of poignancy buoyed by wry humor. From start to finish, no matter what else he’s up to, Hemon is telling a tale about the resilience of true love. . . .
To read the rest of this review, go to The Washington Post:
https://www.washingtonpost.com/books/...
November 7, 2022
A story that is impossible to define in any one word, or even a sentence. It is a story that I will possibly never understand completely, but will continue to feel deeply the suffering, the pain, the haunting memories, the devastation and destruction of the people whose lives fill these pages, along with the unbearably haunting love felt by those who inhabit these pages, as well. It will, however, not be a story for everyone.
I struggled along with these people as they wandered through the twists and turns their lives take, felt their pain, their rage at the injustice of it all, and ultimately, for some, their fall into despair followed by addictions, and ultimately worse.
This is not an easy read, it is dark and filled with suffering, but there is also love. Love that is often unbreakable, despite the distance created by loss. Love that is painful, love that is cruel. Love that connects the distance between this world and the next. Love between a man who becomes the father of a daughter through loss, and a daughter who only recognizes this man who raised her as her father.
So many lives lived by these people, not in the sense of reincarnation, but by the upending of their lives over and over and over again. Sarajevo. Jerusalmen. Shanghai. America. A lifelong quest for a place to call home. A place where safety, security, a sense of being accepted, welcomed as a person rather than an unwelcome presence. A place to, finally, call home and, ultimately, to find a place to call home. A dream, really, that we all have but not all manage to fulfill.
It is a story of life - the good, the bad and the ugly, a story of family and those families who are created through bonds more than blood, a story that will haunt you in the best and most heartbreaking ways. It is dark and bloody at times, but there is also much love in these pages. There is no ‘one’ category that this story fits into, because that is the way life is. It is all of that and more.
Pub Date: 24 Jan 2023
Many thanks for the ARC provided by Farrar, Straus and Giroux, MCD
June 13, 2024
5 "as Osman loves Pinto" stars !!
Thank you to Netgalley, the author and Farrar, Strauss & Giroux for an ecopy. I am providing an honest review. This was released January 2023.
Last Spring I came in from the garden and I heard sobs coming from upstairs. My beloved was crying and I held him and soothed him and wondered what had affected him so. He was reading this book and I became afraid. I avoided this novel. What could move my man to sobbing would likely devastate me. This past Valentine's my beloved simply wrote "as Osman loves Pinto" and I knew I had to begin....
This is a novel that shook me up, fulfilled me, ravaged me. A book of immense spirituality, humanity, philosophy and romantic love. A story so important yet lost among the deserts of Central Asia. Prose that is eloquent, elegant and imperative. An experience that will stay with me forever while consolidating all that I hold dear and true. A peak reading experience. Supreme gratitude to the gods that have let me have my own Osman...
Simply unsurpassable....Mr. Hemon I am forever in your debt...
Thank you to Netgalley, the author and Farrar, Strauss & Giroux for an ecopy. I am providing an honest review. This was released January 2023.
Last Spring I came in from the garden and I heard sobs coming from upstairs. My beloved was crying and I held him and soothed him and wondered what had affected him so. He was reading this book and I became afraid. I avoided this novel. What could move my man to sobbing would likely devastate me. This past Valentine's my beloved simply wrote "as Osman loves Pinto" and I knew I had to begin....
This is a novel that shook me up, fulfilled me, ravaged me. A book of immense spirituality, humanity, philosophy and romantic love. A story so important yet lost among the deserts of Central Asia. Prose that is eloquent, elegant and imperative. An experience that will stay with me forever while consolidating all that I hold dear and true. A peak reading experience. Supreme gratitude to the gods that have let me have my own Osman...
Simply unsurpassable....Mr. Hemon I am forever in your debt...
January 21, 2024
Rich and imaginative, with a queer love story for the ages. I was touched following Rafael Pinto star-crossed love from Sarajevo, to the trenches of World War One, Tashkent, through the Taklamakan desert, Shanghai and beyond
Just love each other, whatever the world you think you might be in. There is nothing else you can do. And who knows, maybe all this insanity will produce a better world, where everyone can love whoever they want. Stranger things have happened.
A love story like no other, bold and beautiful, often heartbreaking, oscillating between the perspective of lovers to the love a parent feels.
An impressive and daring work!
We start off with Rafael Pinto - a Jewish apothecary and Osman, his Muslim lover, also known as the handsome Bosnian. They experience history from the first hand in Sarajevo and the start of the First World War: I can confirm from personal experience that we are always late to the history in which we live
Harrowing scenes of war follow, which Aleksandar Hemon imbues with lyricism: Death makes you impervious to dying
Translation, love, storytelling and disintegration of the Austrian Hungarian empire features prominently, while people keep struggling on amidst the chaos: Everything that lives wants to keep on living
We travel to Tashkent and even China, in a wild search for lost lovers (I love him more than myself). Meanwhile a child emerges and requires a different kind of love, imbuing meaning to the life of Pinto:
But they were not convinced that their worthlessness could save them
History is a canvas for The World and All That It Holds, with people working for the Russian secret police, struggles with drugs addiction, Jewish prosecution and being uprooted
Not to say the book is perfect, I feel I miss some things in the narrative, suddenly Clara and the child really confused me, and the goal of the major is also a bit unclear to me. 6 years in the Taklamatan desert, and travels through Tashkent, Shanghai, Sarajevo, the travels feel biblical, enforced by the references to god and the Thora. Little Vienna, a Jewish ghetto in Shanghai, is a fascinating history I wasn't aware of, it being one of the few places with no visa requirements for Jews during World War Two. Meanwhile, war is a tourist attraction to white population in Shanghai in the 1930s.
The wandering Jew as a concept is taken to a whole new level in this book, which at its heart is a deeply emotional love story. A very special read and how this remains compelling even though continents are traversed and decades pass, is an achievement.
Quotes:
Weep for the mourners, not for the soul that already has gone home
As long as I live, Osman said, you will not be cold again
Friends don’t fuck.
You didn’t have many friends, did you?
I want to go home.
You are my home.
We just live because we are afraid to die, we live out of cowardice
And if the past can be lived through, so can the future
And the world and all that it holds will be the same and not the same.
Even here in the asshole of the world it is clear that everything will soon end
The still, sad music of the world
Foreigners carry death, even if it is their own
The reek of burning human flesh
Death ends all pain
She was born a refugee, never knowing what a home is
They all thought that the imagined future could redeem there present suffering
The desert stars like a typhoid rash
Let us not worry, it won’t be good
Remember the future
She is a person, she is entitled to her mistakes
Welcome to the end of the world
I haven’t loved him enough, I wasted my life not loving him enough
Just love each other, whatever the world you think you might be in. There is nothing else you can do. And who knows, maybe all this insanity will produce a better world, where everyone can love whoever they want. Stranger things have happened.
A love story like no other, bold and beautiful, often heartbreaking, oscillating between the perspective of lovers to the love a parent feels.
An impressive and daring work!
We start off with Rafael Pinto - a Jewish apothecary and Osman, his Muslim lover, also known as the handsome Bosnian. They experience history from the first hand in Sarajevo and the start of the First World War: I can confirm from personal experience that we are always late to the history in which we live
Harrowing scenes of war follow, which Aleksandar Hemon imbues with lyricism: Death makes you impervious to dying
Translation, love, storytelling and disintegration of the Austrian Hungarian empire features prominently, while people keep struggling on amidst the chaos: Everything that lives wants to keep on living
We travel to Tashkent and even China, in a wild search for lost lovers (I love him more than myself). Meanwhile a child emerges and requires a different kind of love, imbuing meaning to the life of Pinto:
But they were not convinced that their worthlessness could save them
History is a canvas for The World and All That It Holds, with people working for the Russian secret police, struggles with drugs addiction, Jewish prosecution and being uprooted
Not to say the book is perfect, I feel I miss some things in the narrative, suddenly Clara and the child really confused me, and the goal of the major is also a bit unclear to me. 6 years in the Taklamatan desert, and travels through Tashkent, Shanghai, Sarajevo, the travels feel biblical, enforced by the references to god and the Thora. Little Vienna, a Jewish ghetto in Shanghai, is a fascinating history I wasn't aware of, it being one of the few places with no visa requirements for Jews during World War Two. Meanwhile, war is a tourist attraction to white population in Shanghai in the 1930s.
The wandering Jew as a concept is taken to a whole new level in this book, which at its heart is a deeply emotional love story. A very special read and how this remains compelling even though continents are traversed and decades pass, is an achievement.
Quotes:
Weep for the mourners, not for the soul that already has gone home
As long as I live, Osman said, you will not be cold again
Friends don’t fuck.
You didn’t have many friends, did you?
I want to go home.
You are my home.
We just live because we are afraid to die, we live out of cowardice
And if the past can be lived through, so can the future
And the world and all that it holds will be the same and not the same.
Even here in the asshole of the world it is clear that everything will soon end
The still, sad music of the world
Foreigners carry death, even if it is their own
The reek of burning human flesh
Death ends all pain
She was born a refugee, never knowing what a home is
They all thought that the imagined future could redeem there present suffering
The desert stars like a typhoid rash
Let us not worry, it won’t be good
Remember the future
She is a person, she is entitled to her mistakes
Welcome to the end of the world
I haven’t loved him enough, I wasted my life not loving him enough
April 12, 2023
'There is no world, it occurred to me, in which everyone wins or nobody loses.'
This is an ambitious and brave book. It is also a frustrating and problematic book. The writing is truly gorgeous, lingering and sensual – doubly so when Aleksandar Hemon depicts the horrors of war(s) and refugee life. There are many, many scenes of outrage and bloodshed here that make the reading experience really difficult in places.
Said refugee life involves walking across the desert for six years with a young daughter in tow, a timeline that tests the reader’s credulity. This is not helped by the fact that Hemon lets major events slip by in the background, skips chunks of time, or just seems to forget at which point of the story he is at.
The part that did not work for me, and I honestly think it was a mistake to include it, is the final chapter where the author visits a writer’s festival in Israel and recounts how he feels a fraud because his book is totally made up and he cannot relate to any of the other writers present. I understand what Hemon was trying to say here about how ‘art’ must excavate ‘history’, but I am in two minds as to whether his ‘story’ needed it or not.
Why is it always the difficult or problematic books that tend to stay with one? I have been thinking about Osman and Pinto since I finished reading this, and their abiding love that outlasts war (and peace), crosses continents and touches so many other lives.
This is an ambitious and brave book. It is also a frustrating and problematic book. The writing is truly gorgeous, lingering and sensual – doubly so when Aleksandar Hemon depicts the horrors of war(s) and refugee life. There are many, many scenes of outrage and bloodshed here that make the reading experience really difficult in places.
Said refugee life involves walking across the desert for six years with a young daughter in tow, a timeline that tests the reader’s credulity. This is not helped by the fact that Hemon lets major events slip by in the background, skips chunks of time, or just seems to forget at which point of the story he is at.
The part that did not work for me, and I honestly think it was a mistake to include it, is the final chapter where the author visits a writer’s festival in Israel and recounts how he feels a fraud because his book is totally made up and he cannot relate to any of the other writers present. I understand what Hemon was trying to say here about how ‘art’ must excavate ‘history’, but I am in two minds as to whether his ‘story’ needed it or not.
Why is it always the difficult or problematic books that tend to stay with one? I have been thinking about Osman and Pinto since I finished reading this, and their abiding love that outlasts war (and peace), crosses continents and touches so many other lives.
June 2, 2023
Aleksandar Hermon’s beautiful tale begins with the assassination of Franz Ferdinand, and spans right through to Shanghai in 1949. It is a tale of war and enduring love. It is stunning. And heartbreaking.
It’s realise date of course overlaps somewhat with Alice Winn’s ‘In Memoriam’, and I’ve heard quite a few people making comparisons between these two books as both centre around relationships between soldiers during WWI. However, I doubt if people making these comparisons have actually read both books yet, as that is where the similarities end. They are completely different books.
‘The World And All That It Holds’ begins in WWI, but moves on throughout the next three decades, and follows refugees as they flee war-torn countries from Bosnia to China.
Hemon’s prose is beautiful, but I will say a little challenging at the start and it took around 50 pages for me to get into it’s flow and submerge myself in it. But once I was in, it was stunning.
Much more than Alice Winn, I would say I was reminded of Faulkner and even Blood Meridian in parts (probably because that’s also quite Faulknerian). ‘Seven Moons of Maali Almeida’ too.
I’ve already read some wonderful books in 2023, and this is definitely up there with the best of them.
It’s realise date of course overlaps somewhat with Alice Winn’s ‘In Memoriam’, and I’ve heard quite a few people making comparisons between these two books as both centre around relationships between soldiers during WWI. However, I doubt if people making these comparisons have actually read both books yet, as that is where the similarities end. They are completely different books.
‘The World And All That It Holds’ begins in WWI, but moves on throughout the next three decades, and follows refugees as they flee war-torn countries from Bosnia to China.
Hemon’s prose is beautiful, but I will say a little challenging at the start and it took around 50 pages for me to get into it’s flow and submerge myself in it. But once I was in, it was stunning.
Much more than Alice Winn, I would say I was reminded of Faulkner and even Blood Meridian in parts (probably because that’s also quite Faulknerian). ‘Seven Moons of Maali Almeida’ too.
I’ve already read some wonderful books in 2023, and this is definitely up there with the best of them.
February 7, 2023
On my blog.
Rep: Bosnian Sephardic Jewish gay mc, Bosnian Muslim gay li, Chinese gay side character
CWs: opium addiction, antisemitism, islamophobia, gore, amputation, violence
Galley provided by publisher
The World and All That It Holds is a historical novel that spans decades, following the love of two men during the first world war and beyond. It’s a novel that I had high-ish hopes for and, as therefore might be surmised by the rating, it’s one that let me down on that front.
The story starts just before the first world war, in fact, on the day that Archduke Franz Ferdinand was assassinated in Sarajevo. Then we skip ahead a few years and find our main character already established in this relationship that is to be so central to the book. This, then, might be the first issue for me: that there is no chance to see the relationship’s development on page. Why is our main character so in love with Osman? Why is this love the driving force throughout the book? In a sense, you might expect this, given that the book is framed as a secondhand story told to a third party. That might explain the certain feeling of being held at arms’ length, but I feel there are still ways in which you can show the development of a relationship, primarily among which would be showing the start and growth of it on page.
Perhaps this was, inadvertently, some kind of foreshadowing. This two year timeskip, between the start of the war and the first scene between the main character and his love interest-slash-driving force, was only a harbinger of more, and longer ones, to come. Of course, if you have a book you want to span decades, it makes sense that you’re going to need timeskips. Only, they happened at the oddest of times, sometimes even feeling like mid-scene (and it would then be revealed in a later time, just how that scene had ended). Maybe this was simply a stylistic choice, but it’s one that I didn’t get along with particularly.
But both of these aspects gave way in the end to the real sticking point for me and that, an unavoidable subject given the era this was set in, was surrounding the occupation of Palestine. I say unavoidable because here we have a story that spans 1948, that features Jewish main characters, that is, quite centrally, about exile, homeland and ties to homeland. But, for all that, there is scarce mention of an event that caused the biggest proliferation of refugees in the 20th century. There are a couple of comments at the end (which, coincidentally but not, takes place in Jerusalem, as it turns out most of the Bosnian Jewish characters have settled there, including our storyteller), which are, at best, equivocal. There is a single mention of the Nakba — not by name — as merely the following:
While I suppose this is not inaccurate in the vaguest of senses, it obscures a hell of a lot more. The absolute best I can say about this book is that it both-sides the situation, although it might be quite a stretch even to say that. Let me give you a little rundown of it quickly, and maybe you can see for yourself.
1. The mention of Palestine as a final destination which about-to-die Jewish folks are travelling to, and calling it “home.” [And he would explain to Osman who Rabin Danon had been; how he’d known it was his time to die so he’d set out to walk to Palestine and die there, but had never made it past Stolac; and how the Sarajevo Sefaradim liked to say that a Jew is always on his way home but never makes it there.]
2. The ending taking place at a literary festival described thusly: The event was a panel entitled Writing, War, Suffering; I was to discuss with an Israeli and a German the ways of writing about war and suffering, on which we were presumably experts. This might, at a push, sound tongue-in-cheek. At a push.
3. This quote: There were in fact very few Jews left in the city—most of those who survived the Shoah had already migrated to the newborn Israel. Quickly, “newborn” how?
4. The above quote about a “country of refugees, that created even more refugees”.
5. The ultimate both-sides quote: There is no world, it occurred to me, in which everyone wins or nobody loses. Spoken during the part below.
6. Right at the end, the narrator sits in a coffee shop waiting for the storyteller to come and tell the rest of her tale, watching the television, when he comments on seeing the IOF dragging an Arab family out of their home. This is when the “no world (…) in which everybody wins or nobody loses” quote happens.
7. Also at this point he hears an explosion, which I suppose is meant to be a terrorist attack? Worth noting that this, the comment about refugees, and the description of the IOF are the only times you get mentioned anyone else who might be living in this land. To all intents and purposes, this land on which you get “newborn Israel” is entirely deserted, going by this book.
To be fair to this book for a moment, this isn’t a story about the settler-colonial state that is Israel. This is a book about a Bosnian Jewish character who is exiled from his homeland— oh, wait. Can we see some similarities here? The Nakba and the creation of this state is probably one of the most defining events of the 20th century. For certain, it’s hardly something you can avoid touching upon when you elect to have a Jewish main character. Only, that is what seems to have happened here: there are simply the vaguest of allusions to it, culminating in a shoddy attempt to both-sides it all.
Ultimately, then, this is what let me down most about the book. A historical novel that chooses to ignore this event and yet its consequences become a centre of the storyline (everyone ends up in Israel, after all)? Well, I suppose it’s a good thing this book is shelved as fiction then.
Rep: Bosnian Sephardic Jewish gay mc, Bosnian Muslim gay li, Chinese gay side character
CWs: opium addiction, antisemitism, islamophobia, gore, amputation, violence
Galley provided by publisher
The World and All That It Holds is a historical novel that spans decades, following the love of two men during the first world war and beyond. It’s a novel that I had high-ish hopes for and, as therefore might be surmised by the rating, it’s one that let me down on that front.
The story starts just before the first world war, in fact, on the day that Archduke Franz Ferdinand was assassinated in Sarajevo. Then we skip ahead a few years and find our main character already established in this relationship that is to be so central to the book. This, then, might be the first issue for me: that there is no chance to see the relationship’s development on page. Why is our main character so in love with Osman? Why is this love the driving force throughout the book? In a sense, you might expect this, given that the book is framed as a secondhand story told to a third party. That might explain the certain feeling of being held at arms’ length, but I feel there are still ways in which you can show the development of a relationship, primarily among which would be showing the start and growth of it on page.
Perhaps this was, inadvertently, some kind of foreshadowing. This two year timeskip, between the start of the war and the first scene between the main character and his love interest-slash-driving force, was only a harbinger of more, and longer ones, to come. Of course, if you have a book you want to span decades, it makes sense that you’re going to need timeskips. Only, they happened at the oddest of times, sometimes even feeling like mid-scene (and it would then be revealed in a later time, just how that scene had ended). Maybe this was simply a stylistic choice, but it’s one that I didn’t get along with particularly.
But both of these aspects gave way in the end to the real sticking point for me and that, an unavoidable subject given the era this was set in, was surrounding the occupation of Palestine. I say unavoidable because here we have a story that spans 1948, that features Jewish main characters, that is, quite centrally, about exile, homeland and ties to homeland. But, for all that, there is scarce mention of an event that caused the biggest proliferation of refugees in the 20th century. There are a couple of comments at the end (which, coincidentally but not, takes place in Jerusalem, as it turns out most of the Bosnian Jewish characters have settled there, including our storyteller), which are, at best, equivocal. There is a single mention of the Nakba — not by name — as merely the following:
I ended up in this country [Israel]. It was new back then, a country of refugees, that created even more refugees.
While I suppose this is not inaccurate in the vaguest of senses, it obscures a hell of a lot more. The absolute best I can say about this book is that it both-sides the situation, although it might be quite a stretch even to say that. Let me give you a little rundown of it quickly, and maybe you can see for yourself.
1. The mention of Palestine as a final destination which about-to-die Jewish folks are travelling to, and calling it “home.” [And he would explain to Osman who Rabin Danon had been; how he’d known it was his time to die so he’d set out to walk to Palestine and die there, but had never made it past Stolac; and how the Sarajevo Sefaradim liked to say that a Jew is always on his way home but never makes it there.]
2. The ending taking place at a literary festival described thusly: The event was a panel entitled Writing, War, Suffering; I was to discuss with an Israeli and a German the ways of writing about war and suffering, on which we were presumably experts. This might, at a push, sound tongue-in-cheek. At a push.
3. This quote: There were in fact very few Jews left in the city—most of those who survived the Shoah had already migrated to the newborn Israel. Quickly, “newborn” how?
4. The above quote about a “country of refugees, that created even more refugees”.
5. The ultimate both-sides quote: There is no world, it occurred to me, in which everyone wins or nobody loses. Spoken during the part below.
6. Right at the end, the narrator sits in a coffee shop waiting for the storyteller to come and tell the rest of her tale, watching the television, when he comments on seeing the IOF dragging an Arab family out of their home. This is when the “no world (…) in which everybody wins or nobody loses” quote happens.
7. Also at this point he hears an explosion, which I suppose is meant to be a terrorist attack? Worth noting that this, the comment about refugees, and the description of the IOF are the only times you get mentioned anyone else who might be living in this land. To all intents and purposes, this land on which you get “newborn Israel” is entirely deserted, going by this book.
To be fair to this book for a moment, this isn’t a story about the settler-colonial state that is Israel. This is a book about a Bosnian Jewish character who is exiled from his homeland— oh, wait. Can we see some similarities here? The Nakba and the creation of this state is probably one of the most defining events of the 20th century. For certain, it’s hardly something you can avoid touching upon when you elect to have a Jewish main character. Only, that is what seems to have happened here: there are simply the vaguest of allusions to it, culminating in a shoddy attempt to both-sides it all.
Ultimately, then, this is what let me down most about the book. A historical novel that chooses to ignore this event and yet its consequences become a centre of the storyline (everyone ends up in Israel, after all)? Well, I suppose it’s a good thing this book is shelved as fiction then.
February 17, 2023
3.5 stars.
Exquisitely written, so much so that I felt completely removed from the characters and the story at times, to the point that it was often a burden to pick up the book.
Also, to me, the book seems to lack purpose. A shame because in the end, I’ll have forgotten all about it in a few weeks/months.
Exquisitely written, so much so that I felt completely removed from the characters and the story at times, to the point that it was often a burden to pick up the book.
Also, to me, the book seems to lack purpose. A shame because in the end, I’ll have forgotten all about it in a few weeks/months.
February 5, 2023
I first became aware of Aleksandar Hemon when I read his New Yorker essay “The Aquarium,” about the illness and death of his baby daughter Isabel. A novel about the love between Osman (a Muslim) and Pinto (a Sephardic Jew), both Sarajevans conscripted into the Austro-Hungarian army in WWI, can hardly be autobiographical, but The World and All That It Holds is permeated with the experience of loss – loss of home, loss of the beloved, loss of family – and with a sense of God as an alien and indifferent force that does what it will without regard to the suffering it inflicts on its creatures. Osman, in his tenderness and his lifesaving interventions, is the one great source of benevolence in Pinto’s world.
Osman appears to Pinto – and, later, to their daughter, Rahela – long after he has almost certainly died. But his appearances have effects in the living world. Is he “real”? The narrative constantly confounds imagination and reality, history and fiction (Major Moser-Ethering and the many, many volumes of his autobiography). The result is disorienting and unstable, like the many untranslated passages from Spanjol, German, and Bosnian; like the opium dreams Pinto loses himself in during the fall of the Kuomintang. And like history, and like memory.
I said that The World and All That It Holds can hardly be autobiographical, but the passages set in the Taklamakan desert, during the long crossing of which Pinto works feverishly to keep Rahela alive, are among the most beautiful and moving evocations of love and despair I’ve ever read or ever expect to read. I think Hemon must have drawn on his own experience of losing a child. The most important aspect of this book is its heart – its center, its emotional gravity. That’s as real as the Samsara stone Pinto gives Rahela to wear as a pendant.
Devastatingly sad. Wonderful.
Thanks to NetGalley for the ARC.
Osman appears to Pinto – and, later, to their daughter, Rahela – long after he has almost certainly died. But his appearances have effects in the living world. Is he “real”? The narrative constantly confounds imagination and reality, history and fiction (Major Moser-Ethering and the many, many volumes of his autobiography). The result is disorienting and unstable, like the many untranslated passages from Spanjol, German, and Bosnian; like the opium dreams Pinto loses himself in during the fall of the Kuomintang. And like history, and like memory.
I said that The World and All That It Holds can hardly be autobiographical, but the passages set in the Taklamakan desert, during the long crossing of which Pinto works feverishly to keep Rahela alive, are among the most beautiful and moving evocations of love and despair I’ve ever read or ever expect to read. I think Hemon must have drawn on his own experience of losing a child. The most important aspect of this book is its heart – its center, its emotional gravity. That’s as real as the Samsara stone Pinto gives Rahela to wear as a pendant.
Devastatingly sad. Wonderful.
Thanks to NetGalley for the ARC.
April 19, 2023
The grandiose-sounding title put me off but the reputation of the author put me back on, and I am SO glad I read it. The book and the author are anything but grandiose. In fact, the author and his main protagonists are all so unpretentiously authentic that they give the title an entirely different spin - that magnificence in our human world comes from ordinary lives, lived in extraordinary hardship. This is not something protagonist (and hero?) Rafael Pinto would say though - quite the opposite:
Without an ounce of info dumping, I learned a tremendous amount about living through the First World War and its aftermath in Central Europe and Asia- learned it through head and heart.
And boy, does Hemon stick the landing in this book.
"The meaning of life is not to be dead; you live so as not to die. That's it. Ask any soldier or refugee, anyone who has lived through a war....There is no meaning to it, any more than there is meaning to time. There is just life."
Without an ounce of info dumping, I learned a tremendous amount about living through the First World War and its aftermath in Central Europe and Asia- learned it through head and heart.
And boy, does Hemon stick the landing in this book.
January 3, 2023
Is there always an answer? Do we always know why?
Hemon shows us a lot. He takes us from Sarajevo onto a war in the trenches, then as refugees in Eastern Europe and on and on to Asia and international Shanghai.
He writes a conveyor belt of dust and stones. Movement of little people, refugees ensnared by forces bigger than them and put on a carousel of movement, loss, separation, grief, pain, violence and destruction. Lives tossed all over the place. We follow them through their suffering. Not easy to get through such sad bleakness. Hemon does not give us any answers. The sadness is what I take away from this. Hard to live such a life.
An ARC kindly provided by author/publisher via Netgalley
Hemon shows us a lot. He takes us from Sarajevo onto a war in the trenches, then as refugees in Eastern Europe and on and on to Asia and international Shanghai.
He writes a conveyor belt of dust and stones. Movement of little people, refugees ensnared by forces bigger than them and put on a carousel of movement, loss, separation, grief, pain, violence and destruction. Lives tossed all over the place. We follow them through their suffering. Not easy to get through such sad bleakness. Hemon does not give us any answers. The sadness is what I take away from this. Hard to live such a life.
An ARC kindly provided by author/publisher via Netgalley
February 14, 2023
I had such high hopes for this book, especially as it's also Hemon's venture into lgbt+ topics, however, this was such a struggle to get through, the book is so lyrical only for the sake of being lyrical, it's very impressive, but i don't see the point. the main idea is just recycled through various chapters/situations/time leaps with more or less the same story. Also, with so many quotes in different languages (most of which I speak/understand) that are not even translated or explained in any way, it is very difficult to comprehend and just overall no fun at all. It received so much praise, but I really don't get why or how, sorry. I loved Hemon's earlier works, but the last few ones, I don't know what to think.
February 2, 2023
Only February but I’m positively certain that this will finish in my top ten books of 2023. If you are already a fan of Hemon, you should be more than pleased with this novel. I think it is his best work. If you haven’t read him, what are you waiting for? I will be shocked if this doesn’t receive prize recognition. It’s that good.
April 5, 2023
Hemon, a Bosnian-American writer himself, creates a bonanza of a novel that carries our Bosnian protagonist from Sarajevo at the start of World War I through multiple continents and decades as he tries to reunite with his gay lover and raise his lover’s daughter.
March 3, 2024
зараз спробую сформувати всі свої думки в послідовний відгук.
історія ця торкає, особливо кінцеві факти про неї (без спойлерів). вона то пришвидшується, то уповільнюється, і мені деколи це подобалося, деколи – хотілося іншого темпу.
загалом тут цікавий погляд, оскільки історія розповідається різними персонажами.
це не тільки про любов двох чоловіків під час війни, тут багато-багато всього: життя під час війн, історії людей, що втратили дім і бажання повернутися, виховання дітей, важкі життєві вибори та їх наслідки тощо.
у Гемона свій, особливий стиль написання, який підкупав.
проте я читала електронну книгу в застосунку Лібраріус і часом дуже не вистачало перекладів фраз та пояснень слів, які деколи не могла знайти й при самостійному пошуку. сподіваюся, в паперовій книзі це є.
також хочеться п��передити, що певні сцени тут можуть тригернути, бути досить болючими та неприємними. таких декілька.
загалом – раджу.
історія ця торкає, особливо кінцеві факти про неї (без спойлерів). вона то пришвидшується, то уповільнюється, і мені деколи це подобалося, деколи – хотілося іншого темпу.
загалом тут цікавий погляд, оскільки історія розповідається різними персонажами.
це не тільки про любов двох чоловіків під час війни, тут багато-багато всього: життя під час війн, історії людей, що втратили дім і бажання повернутися, виховання дітей, важкі життєві вибори та їх наслідки тощо.
у Гемона свій, особливий стиль написання, який підкупав.
проте я читала електронну книгу в застосунку Лібраріус і часом дуже не вистачало перекладів фраз та пояснень слів, які деколи не могла знайти й при самостійному пошуку. сподіваюся, в паперовій книзі це є.
також хочеться п��передити, що певні сцени тут можуть тригернути, бути досить болючими та неприємними. таких декілька.
загалом – раджу.
September 22, 2022
The World and All That It Holds demands to be taken on its own terms. Readers must meet it where it lives rather than assuming that it will gently guide one through the perils of its story. It is the jagged rocky desert at night with only the million-billion stars as light; it is the insignificant humans caught in the juggernaut of war; it is the Hell valley of Gehenna. It is also the despair of full-throated true love—love that pains every part of the body because it is too much and not enough at the same time. Love that will not allow death to destroy the bond between the loved and the lover. Hemon has created here a work that can only be approached askance—as perhaps some might feel God must be approached—for the full-faced embrace will leave one running for the distant hills. At a certain point there is no line between embodying everything and complete madness and this book lives in that hair-breadth liminal space. I don’t know if I can recommend this book or that I can quantify its tenor, but it will affect its readers, and that, in the end, is all that one can hope for from the best of literature.
December 20, 2022
War is cruel. War is bloody, destructive, and devastating. War creates widows, widowers, orphans, and bereaved parents. War separates families in artificial and violent ways. War leaves scars on souls and skin, severs literal limbs and metaphorical hearts. War is hell, indeed. But war can also bring out the best in us. It can show us the value of love and care. It showcases generosity in circumstances where resources are most scarce. Love in war is never taken for granted; we know that each moment of love could be our last.
Rafo Pinto comes of age just when the First World War begins. He is at the parade in Sarajevo when Archduke Franz Ferdinand is shot. An apothecary, he is enlisted as a medic and finds himself in the trenches of that brutal conflict. But it is also there that he meets the love of his life, the handsome, charismatic Osman. When they are overrun during a battle, an odyssey begins that will take Rafo all over Europe and Asia in his quest for a place to be. He has no papers and can't find a way back home, so seeks to thrive as best he can wherever he lands. All of this is complicated by the fact that he quite inadvertently winds up with a baby on his hands. Rahela becomes his beloved daughter, accompanying him through all his trials and dangers. She comes of age in Shanghai at a time when that place, too, is plagued by violence and war. But what endures is Rafo's love for Osman. Whether hallucinating his presence next to him or feeling his touch in an opium haze, Osman is never far from his heart and his mind.
All of this adds up to what should have been a compelling read, a generous tale of love, war, terror, and death; these elements can be molded into a truly satisfying book. But here they are instead used in service of an odd emotional distancing, an arm's-length examination of some oddball characters and their antics. It does not help matters any that there is a certain relentlessness to the struggles the characters endure; it begins to feel rather more allegorical than human. This is an odd outcome; the people here are wonderfully drawn and compelling, the circumstances of the plot offer themselves up for engagement, yet there is a coldness to Hemon's writing that leaves us at a remove from the story. I have to believe this is intentional; he has a long history of writing novels that draw his readers in. While it is praiseworthy to portray how very painful and disorienting war and conflict can be (not to mention homophobia), because we are not allowed to love these characters, the impact of that portrayal is muted. Which is a shame, because the story of Rafo is so very lovely in a thoroughly brutal way.
Rafo Pinto comes of age just when the First World War begins. He is at the parade in Sarajevo when Archduke Franz Ferdinand is shot. An apothecary, he is enlisted as a medic and finds himself in the trenches of that brutal conflict. But it is also there that he meets the love of his life, the handsome, charismatic Osman. When they are overrun during a battle, an odyssey begins that will take Rafo all over Europe and Asia in his quest for a place to be. He has no papers and can't find a way back home, so seeks to thrive as best he can wherever he lands. All of this is complicated by the fact that he quite inadvertently winds up with a baby on his hands. Rahela becomes his beloved daughter, accompanying him through all his trials and dangers. She comes of age in Shanghai at a time when that place, too, is plagued by violence and war. But what endures is Rafo's love for Osman. Whether hallucinating his presence next to him or feeling his touch in an opium haze, Osman is never far from his heart and his mind.
All of this adds up to what should have been a compelling read, a generous tale of love, war, terror, and death; these elements can be molded into a truly satisfying book. But here they are instead used in service of an odd emotional distancing, an arm's-length examination of some oddball characters and their antics. It does not help matters any that there is a certain relentlessness to the struggles the characters endure; it begins to feel rather more allegorical than human. This is an odd outcome; the people here are wonderfully drawn and compelling, the circumstances of the plot offer themselves up for engagement, yet there is a coldness to Hemon's writing that leaves us at a remove from the story. I have to believe this is intentional; he has a long history of writing novels that draw his readers in. While it is praiseworthy to portray how very painful and disorienting war and conflict can be (not to mention homophobia), because we are not allowed to love these characters, the impact of that portrayal is muted. Which is a shame, because the story of Rafo is so very lovely in a thoroughly brutal way.
February 9, 2023
The reviews that overflowed with exuberant praise made me start reading this book, and I really wanted to like it. As soon as I read the first page, I suspected that I would feel a sense of accomplishment when I finished it (as I felt with War and Peace many years ago), but I was not prepared for what a struggling slog it was to keep reading. The publishers described it as humorous - um, that would be a no. Before I start describing what I absolutely did not like, I will say in fairness that everyone has different tastes in books as much as food and hobbies, so this review reflects the fact that this was - ugh-not for me. The premise of the book sounds good:the historical basis is the 1914 assassination in Sarajevo of Archduke Ferdinand of the Hapsburg empire, although the story’s plot focuses on Pinto. The man who has just kissed the Archduke goodbye in his shop a moment before the Archduke and his wife were shot. Then suddenly Pinto is a soldier forced to learn how bloody and tragic and horrific war is for everyone involved. So kudos to author Aleksander Hemon for showing that war should not be romanticized as a time of glory; “Dulce et decorum est pro patria mori”– as poet Wilfred Owen also emphasized with his mocking line in a poem about the same World War. I love historical fiction. I enjoy intellectual books as well as popular easy reads from best-selling fiction books. I think it is tragic that our planet is consumed with war and children continue to suffer and die in refugee camps. I enjoy books with characters whose lives and lifestyle choices are different than mine. Why do I list all those things? Because I did not in any way enjoy this book,and it had nothing to do with main events. Reading it was like I was forced to sit next to someone on a long flight who speaks in a monotonous voice and describes second hand a story that someone else had told to them – but while using an app to find unique synonyms and antonyms and also throwing in an overload of foreign language sentences and which do not lend themselves to a general understanding from the context in which they are used.. The love story between two men gets lost in verbosity spanning several decades of history all the way up to 9/11 in 2001, and that is a shame because the perils of the relationship might have been as moving as the episode “Long Long Time” in the television series The Last of Us or the book Under the Whispering Door.
June 13, 2023
I do not know how to describe what I am feeling after finishing this book. It made me joyful, made me very sad, I was left feeling hopeful, feeling that I have lost someone, and made me want to dream all over again. The book begins in Sarajevo. The book transports us to 1914, the assassination that triggered the first world war.
In all of this action there is Rafael Pinto - Sephardic-Jewish, Vienna education pharmacist, who is homosexual, uses opium to free himself, and is bold enough to kiss cavalry officers who come to his shop. The war sends him off all the way across to the Eurasian landmass, and eventually he is in Shanghai, 35 years later. The book is epic - not only in its scope but also when it comes to the human heart. Pinto's losses are palpable. When his lover Osman, whom he meets during the war, goes missing, we see the melancholy that is unbearable, the kind that can be gone only when you drown yourself in alcohol or other substances. And how it all changes for him one fine day, when he encounters someone.
In all of this there is also comfort in a way that I found extremely surprising and also taken in by the twist. Pinto's character made me bleed for him. I wanted to hold him and tell him that it will all be okay. He never loses hope - never losing his sensitivity, his poetic self, no matter how hard his world is crumbling around him. Hemon's prose makes you read in different languages. You are reading English, of which you are aware, but there is also Bosnian and German and Turkish and Spanish that enters these pages - with no explanation (which is a great thing to my mind) - on one hand language helps binding people in the narrative, and on the other hand it excludes.
Hemon's novel is magnificent - it is about love that is there in so many forms, love that makes you question everything, and how it ends up redeeming you for all that is worth - The World and all That It Holds is a coming-of-age-novel, it is a novel about friendship, about what binds us, about who we are as people, about the repercussions of war, of people and who they are at the core, but above all about love in its most simple and pure form.
In all of this action there is Rafael Pinto - Sephardic-Jewish, Vienna education pharmacist, who is homosexual, uses opium to free himself, and is bold enough to kiss cavalry officers who come to his shop. The war sends him off all the way across to the Eurasian landmass, and eventually he is in Shanghai, 35 years later. The book is epic - not only in its scope but also when it comes to the human heart. Pinto's losses are palpable. When his lover Osman, whom he meets during the war, goes missing, we see the melancholy that is unbearable, the kind that can be gone only when you drown yourself in alcohol or other substances. And how it all changes for him one fine day, when he encounters someone.
In all of this there is also comfort in a way that I found extremely surprising and also taken in by the twist. Pinto's character made me bleed for him. I wanted to hold him and tell him that it will all be okay. He never loses hope - never losing his sensitivity, his poetic self, no matter how hard his world is crumbling around him. Hemon's prose makes you read in different languages. You are reading English, of which you are aware, but there is also Bosnian and German and Turkish and Spanish that enters these pages - with no explanation (which is a great thing to my mind) - on one hand language helps binding people in the narrative, and on the other hand it excludes.
Hemon's novel is magnificent - it is about love that is there in so many forms, love that makes you question everything, and how it ends up redeeming you for all that is worth - The World and all That It Holds is a coming-of-age-novel, it is a novel about friendship, about what binds us, about who we are as people, about the repercussions of war, of people and who they are at the core, but above all about love in its most simple and pure form.
Read
February 26, 2023Really struggled with this one. Think I’m just not “smart” enough and its numerous stories tied together in a sloppy bow.
I know folks are RAVING about this one - I can’t lie and say I agree, but it did seem special when I understood what I was reading (seriously, it can be very confusing.)
I’d love to read a book like this one but written for people without a doctorate in literature.
No rating.
I know folks are RAVING about this one - I can’t lie and say I agree, but it did seem special when I understood what I was reading (seriously, it can be very confusing.)
I’d love to read a book like this one but written for people without a doctorate in literature.
No rating.
April 25, 2023
I usually avoid these multi-generational epics with large casts of characters. But it was hard to say no to a new Hemon, even though I found his early books more memorable than his more recent work. As usual, I was swept along by the richness and specificity of the unreliable stories and experiences. Even if Rafo Pinto's fate seemed inevitable, I was a little sad at the end, and only somewhat consoled by Osman's mercurial reappearances.
(This is the second multi-generational epic I've enjoyed in a few weeks, after Mariana Enriquez's very different Our Share of Night. I must be getting soft in my old age.)
(This is the second multi-generational epic I've enjoyed in a few weeks, after Mariana Enriquez's very different Our Share of Night. I must be getting soft in my old age.)
April 4, 2024
Idk what to write about this, it's left me all twisted up. Arghhh.
February 23, 2023
Growing up I never understood why my grandmother who lived through WW2 avoided watching war movies at all costs. Then I got to experience war firsthand and I understood. I tend to avoid war themed books but this is Aleksandar Hemon, one of my favorite authors so I braced myself and dove right in. This book wrecked me, broke me and built me up again and it took me days to work my way through all the emotions it left me sitting with. The World and All That It Holds is a love story, a war story, poetry in motion but most of all it is a deeply emotional literary journey of characters I will never forget.
The assassination of Archduke Franz Ferdinand in Sarajevo changed the course of history and started WW1. It also leads Rafael Pinto away from the comfort of running his family's apothecary into the trenches of Galicia. The horrors of war are softened only because of the stolen moments of tenderness and affection with Osman, another Bosnian soldier. Stories and memories of home, folklore and sevdah (traditional Bosnian music), the worst and the best of humanity, and an unexpected love story of a Bosnian Jew and a Bosnian Muslim, all of it combined felt like a symphony of emotions in a literary form.
I cried so much reading this story. There was so much love, tenderness but also so much pain in these pages. Hemon is a master storyteller who is not afraid to play with language(s) and every once in a while I would have to pause and marvel at this author's brilliance. And reach for my box of tissues. This book is complex, beautifully written AND demanding. And as icing on the cake, Aleksandar Hemon collaborated with an incredibly talented Bosnian musician whose work I absolutely love - Damir Imamovic, who will be releasing an album to accompany this novel. I will be recommending this book to all of my fellow literary fiction lovers - it really is that good.
A huge thank you to Netgalley, Penguin Random House Canada & Farrar, Straus and Giroux for gifting me an ARC of this book in exchange for an honest review!
The assassination of Archduke Franz Ferdinand in Sarajevo changed the course of history and started WW1. It also leads Rafael Pinto away from the comfort of running his family's apothecary into the trenches of Galicia. The horrors of war are softened only because of the stolen moments of tenderness and affection with Osman, another Bosnian soldier. Stories and memories of home, folklore and sevdah (traditional Bosnian music), the worst and the best of humanity, and an unexpected love story of a Bosnian Jew and a Bosnian Muslim, all of it combined felt like a symphony of emotions in a literary form.
I cried so much reading this story. There was so much love, tenderness but also so much pain in these pages. Hemon is a master storyteller who is not afraid to play with language(s) and every once in a while I would have to pause and marvel at this author's brilliance. And reach for my box of tissues. This book is complex, beautifully written AND demanding. And as icing on the cake, Aleksandar Hemon collaborated with an incredibly talented Bosnian musician whose work I absolutely love - Damir Imamovic, who will be releasing an album to accompany this novel. I will be recommending this book to all of my fellow literary fiction lovers - it really is that good.
A huge thank you to Netgalley, Penguin Random House Canada & Farrar, Straus and Giroux for gifting me an ARC of this book in exchange for an honest review!
November 9, 2022
The World and All That It Holds
By Aleksandar Hemon
This is a very complex book: it is at once a love story between two men, Pinto and Osman; a war story of World War I and beyond; a story of the plight of refugees; a story of family and religion.
Beginning with a firsthand account of the assassination of the Archduke and his wife in Sarajavo, the story takes the reader through many graphic – and often gory – scenes of hardship and suffering. Pinto does a lot of philosophizing about man and God, the nature of their relationship, why the god of his fathers (he is a Jew) is cruel and capricious – or if he even exists.
The writing here is very well done. For me, the main drawback to this book was the multitude of phrases and words in different languages – Bosnian, German, bastardized Spanish, and others – which were not translated and could not always be guessed at via context. I found this distracting.
The book as a whole was a hard go, so be prepared to make a concerted effort to get through it. Only the reader can decide if it is worth the effort.
By Aleksandar Hemon
This is a very complex book: it is at once a love story between two men, Pinto and Osman; a war story of World War I and beyond; a story of the plight of refugees; a story of family and religion.
Beginning with a firsthand account of the assassination of the Archduke and his wife in Sarajavo, the story takes the reader through many graphic – and often gory – scenes of hardship and suffering. Pinto does a lot of philosophizing about man and God, the nature of their relationship, why the god of his fathers (he is a Jew) is cruel and capricious – or if he even exists.
The writing here is very well done. For me, the main drawback to this book was the multitude of phrases and words in different languages – Bosnian, German, bastardized Spanish, and others – which were not translated and could not always be guessed at via context. I found this distracting.
The book as a whole was a hard go, so be prepared to make a concerted effort to get through it. Only the reader can decide if it is worth the effort.
May 18, 2023
Sweeping historical drama, spanning almost an entire century, beginning right before the assassination of Archduke Franz Ferdinand in Sarajevo in 1914, which precipitated the start of WWI, up until 2001, at a writer’s conference in Israel. The story focuses on a homosexual love affair between fellow soldiers Rafael Pinto, a Sephardic Jewish man, and Osman, a Muslim man, revealing that there can be love, even in war. Pinto travels throughout Europe and Asia (the world). The writing is brilliant. The prose is beautiful. BUT, for me, it was a story that was hard to follow and I was not engaged in the plot at all. The plot felt choppy and disjointed. Was that the point of the narrator looking back and telling the story? Also, I am still left wondering, if after Osman was killed, was he a ghost appearing to Rafael throughout his life? As Osman was Rafael’s one true love. The writing is outstanding, it just wasn’t for me.
This entire review has been hidden because of spoilers.
January 19, 2024
"Il senso della vita è non essere morti; si vive per non morire. Tutto qua. Chiedetelo a un soldato o a un profugo, a chiunque sia scampato a una guerra, o a uno di quei bambini ancora vivi che mendicano un pugno di riso su Nanking Road. Chiedetelo a Lenka. Tutto quello che chiediamo alla vita è di continuare a vivere. Né più né meno. Solo i ricchi valutano le ragioni del vivere. Tutti gli altri viventi vogliono vivere e basta. Non c’è alcun senso, non più di quanto ce ne sia nel tempo. C’è solo la vita. Se non c’è vita, non c’è senso."
Questo romanzo è la storia di un viaggio che si dipana per molti luoghi e per molti anni; un viaggio segnato dalla guerra, dall'orrore, dalla fame, ma anche dall'amore, dalla forza delle persone e da tutto ciò che di bello può nascere dall'incontro di tante culture e tradizioni diverse.
Mi è piaciuto molto anche stilisticamente; sembra di seguire il racconto di un cantastorie che interseca lingue, racconti fantastici, canzoni popolari e così via. Magari a volte la scrittura può essere un po' smielata, ma tutto sommato è un aspetto accettabile in un romanzo del genere, quindi non la considero necessariamente una cosa negativa.
Sicuramente è un romanzo con dei difetti: ho trovato la prima metà più forte della seconda e soprattutto, l'epilogo finale per me poteva anche non esserci, penso che non aggiunga niente alla storia e poteva essere tranquillamente evitato; nonostante questo, è stata una lettura che mi ha appassionato, uno di quei romanzi di cui leggi (quasi) ogni singola pagina proprio con piacere e quindi prime 5 stelle dell'anno.
Questo romanzo è la storia di un viaggio che si dipana per molti luoghi e per molti anni; un viaggio segnato dalla guerra, dall'orrore, dalla fame, ma anche dall'amore, dalla forza delle persone e da tutto ciò che di bello può nascere dall'incontro di tante culture e tradizioni diverse.
Mi è piaciuto molto anche stilisticamente; sembra di seguire il racconto di un cantastorie che interseca lingue, racconti fantastici, canzoni popolari e così via. Magari a volte la scrittura può essere un po' smielata, ma tutto sommato è un aspetto accettabile in un romanzo del genere, quindi non la considero necessariamente una cosa negativa.
Sicuramente è un romanzo con dei difetti: ho trovato la prima metà più forte della seconda e soprattutto, l'epilogo finale per me poteva anche non esserci, penso che non aggiunga niente alla storia e poteva essere tranquillamente evitato; nonostante questo, è stata una lettura che mi ha appassionato, uno di quei romanzi di cui leggi (quasi) ogni singola pagina proprio con piacere e quindi prime 5 stelle dell'anno.
April 5, 2023
I loved this. Rafael Pinto lives and works in Sarajevo, and is close by when Archduke Franz Ferdinand and his wife are assassinated, bringing about the advent of the First World War. Rafael joins the army, meets and falls in love with fellow soldier Osman, and so begins a fascinating journey across the Asian continent, spanning decades as well as distance, and finally ending in Shanghai. The style of the book is at once worldly and intimate, lyrical with the traditional songs that punctuate the story (this at first frustrated me as they are reproduced in their original language which I didn't understand, but later I got a sense of what they meant, literally as well as personally to Rafael), and there is even a sense of the fantastical about the long journey and the tragedies and joys that punctuate the characters' lives. This will no doubt be high on my list of favourite books of the year.
January 9, 2024
A beautifully written, epic love story spanning almost the entire 20th century, primarily set in Europe and Asia. It is readily apparent in reading this that every sentence, every word, is crafted with great care and sensitivity. This is my first exposure to Aleksandar Hemon, but it won't be the last.
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