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Jul 08, 2011

D.R. added it

It's hot as hell at the moment, and I just got home after finishing this book while riding on the bus. A dull-eyed, fat kid at the back of the bus kept tapping on his seat with drumsticks, while his equally dull-eyed, fat (though not equally fat) girlfriend stared into space beside him. The incessant, arhythmic patter of the drumsticks drove me mad. I wanted to break them over that kid's head. That was, in fact, the least of what I wanted to do.

All of this has nothing to do with The More...

12 comments like (7 people liked it)

Jan 21, 2009

Karen rated it:

Jeremy gave this book three stars and said that if he'd picked it up before reading Hemon's other stuff, he might have given it more. I feel exactly the same way. This book certainly isn't bad, and I think Hemon has a lot of potential as a writer. But it seems like the whole world has been telling him (in the form of grant upon million-dollar genius grant and over-the-top praise such as "this guy = Nabokov" and "this writer is not only good, he's NECESSARY") that we're all re More...

0 comments like (10 people liked it)

Jun 03, 2008

Leanna rated it:

In 1908, Lazarus Averbuch, an immigrant from Eastern Europe, is shot dead by the Chicago Chief of Police. Almost a century later, fictional Vladimir Brik, an immigrant from Bosnia, decides to write a book about Lazarus. Aleksandar Hemon’s latest novel, The Lazarus Project, imagines Averbuch's life and Brik's research.

Armed with a grant and a fellow-Bosnian photographer, Brik returns to Eastern Europe to learn more Lazarus’s life there. They travel through Ukraine, Moldova, and Bulgar More...

0 comments like (4 people liked it)

Sep 04, 2008

Jeremy Allan rated it:

I probably would rate this book higher than three stars if I'd have come to it first among Hemon's work, but after reading his first two books, this one loses some lustre. Most of my problems with the book were related to where tropes common to Hemon's previous works seemed stale. For example, he often gets compared to Nabokov since his first language is not English. Still, even as Nabokov returns again and again to stories about Russian emigrees, each character stands apart from the others. More...

0 comments like (3 people liked it)

Feb 17, 2009

rmn rated it:

A surprisingly perceptive and intriguing novel juxtaposing the life and subsequent murder of a Jewish immigrant to the United States in the early 1900s after he had escaped from a Ukranian pogrom, with the life of the protagonist and his friend who each immigrated to the US from Bosnia one before the Yugoslavian civil war and the other after.

The protagonist is a Bosnian writer living in present day Chicago who wants to write a book about the murder of an accused anarchist in 1908 by More...

0 comments like (3 people liked it)

Aug 25, 2009

Knitography rated it:

The Lazarus Project consists two intertwined threads; in 1908 Lazarus Averbuch, a Russian immigrant and pogrom survivor is shot by the Chicago chief of police. The story is told from the perspective of his sister Olga as she tries to make sense of her loss. In the present, Vladamir Brik, a writer and Bosnian immigrant, is researching Lazarus' story, hoping to turn it into a book.

Those parts of the book set in 1908 were well-written and enjoyable to read. The author really succeede More...

0 comments like (3 people liked it)

Jan 13, 2009

Benny rated it:

The Lazarus Project follows two storylines, one about a late 19th century Jewish-Ukrainian immigrant to Chicago who is murdered by the Chicago Chief of Police, and the other following a writer researching a novel-to-be about that immigrant by traveling through Southeastern Europe. The latter drags a little at times as the narrator gets bogged down in Ukrainian Jewish Cultural Centers and the like, but the story of Lazarus, the immigrant is good enough to pull the reader through.

Hemon More...

0 comments like (1 person liked it)

Jul 12, 2009

Matt rated it:

I should say up front, Aleks Hemon is one of the two or three living writers that I like most, who I am most excited when I see that they have a new book. I really love his work, on the basis of his wonderful book of stories and his even better first novel, _Nowhere Man_.

This is why it's too bad that I didn't think so much of this new book, _Lazarus Project_. It's Hemon's entry in the "return to the old country" genre of novels, of which everyone has one in them. Hemon's ve More...

0 comments like (2 people liked it)

Feb 06, 2009

Karlan rated it:

This arresting novel was a finalist for the National Book Award and is for the National Book Critics Circle award. It is wonderful that someone could write such a novel who came to the US in 1992. Two stories are told in alternating chapters and both deal with problems of immigration, misunderstanding, prejudice. It was fascinating to read the fictional author's story interspersed with the novel he was writing about a tragic incident in Chicago at the turn of the century.

0 comments like (1 person liked it)

Aug 21, 2008

Ashaspencer rated it:

This book is by a Serbian writer who has been living in Chicago since 1992. The author lived in Uptown and Andersonville -the two neighborhoods in Chicago that I grew up in.

The book begins in these neighborhoods, and then follows the main character on a trip across Eastern Europe - prague, vienna, budapest, etc.

I read the book on a train trip from Vienna to Budapest, as I was in the process of planning my upcoming trip to Prague. It was a somewhat strange experience, More...

0 comments like (3 people liked it)

Jan 27, 2009

Gooddog32 rated it:

I really tried to like this book. I forced myself through 150+ pages before I finally decided that it was not going to get any better. The book has 2 main subjects -- Lazarus, a 19 year old immigrant shot in 1908 by a policeman in Chicago for unknown reasons and the story of the author that is struggling to write Lazarus's story.

While the Lazarus sections are very good and engaging, the struggling writer parts are not. Basically those chapters have this format: Mujo joke, Rora story, More...

0 comments like (3 people liked it)

Sep 09, 2008

Brent rated it:

I've read a few reviews of this novel (one of them is quoted on the back cover) which invoke the name and the ghost of Nabokov. If I believed in ghosts (and cliches) I might wonder if old Vladimir Vladimirovich isn't spinning in his grave. The comparisons are facile and thoughtless but perhaps unsurprising. Critics love to find precedents. In that case, let me add one of my own: Jonathan Safran Foer. I'm sure I'm not the first to say that the stories of this novel and of Everything Is Illuminated More...

0 comments like (1 person liked it)

Aug 21, 2008

Nathan rated it:

I saw Hemon read recently with Junot Diaz, who got a rock star reception at Central Park's Summer Stage. Hemon is not a rock star writer and garnered only polite applause. Unlike Diaz (in Oscar Wao, at any rate), Hemon's writing is not flashy or stylistically strutting somewhat awkwardly to allow for humongous cojones. Born in Sarajevo, Hemon writes with a syncopated English-language sensibility; it seems quiet but then it will sneak up on you and knock you flat. This one's definitely worth More...

0 comments like (1 person liked it)

Apr 02, 2009

Jim rated it:

My friend Kathie "assigned" this book to me - with a due date and everything. And yes, my connections to young Zander could have prejudiced me in his favor (mutual writer and Bosnian acquaintances, sweet home Chicago, etc.) But I gotta say - recent hacks at Modern Popular Literature have left me sore and wanting. (e.g. I've got at least as many connections to "The Time Traveler's Wife", and pee-fucking-you on that.) So disclosures, schmishclosures.

TLP surprised m More...

0 comments like (1 person liked it)

Mar 18, 2009

Joe rated it:

The double narrative of this, like Everything is Illuminated, is off-putting and decentralized, not something suited for fiction. The voice, if there was one, teeters back and forth between an ever-present and annoyingly self-important writer who seems to resemble weirdly the writer of the book itself and a Jewish immigrant's sister in the early 1900s in Chicago. Lazarus, the immigrant, was killed a Chicago police chief and the writer sets out to "solve" this crime. We are then intr More...

1 comment like (1 person liked it)

Dec 01, 2008

Sanja rated it:

A mesmerizing book that manages to capture some of, to me otherwise indescribable, Bosnian identity. What it means to be Bosnian, what it means to be an immigrant to this grand ol' complicated country, what it means to lose everything once and then keep on losing, intentionally, hopelessly.

A master wordsmith, Hemon nevertheless cannot compare, in my view, to Miljenko Jergovic, whose prose is so much more intense, rife with allusion, dialect, history, pain, and, in those rare moments More...

0 comments like

Dec 10, 2011

Greg rated it:

The Lazarus Project is interesting, difficult, disturbing, poignant, and original. While not thoroughly enjoyable, and somehow leaves the reader without some revelation despite the meticulous care with which the story was articulated, it still provides moments of great brilliance and is deserving of a thoughtful and careful read.

The plot revolves around a struggling writer. He is a Bosnian immigrant to Chicago, where he is married but hasn't found it within himself to create roots in A More...

0 comments like

Aug 29, 2011

Melisa rated it:

I just can't get behind the insistence of the publishing industry on pimping out adjectives and adverbs in service of claims of excellence. "Dazzling! Stunning! Makes you thank God Almighty that you can read the English language! The savior of the American novel!" Enough already. This novel is not the second coming of E.M. Forrester or any other mythic creature. However, it's good. I liked it. I learned things, about Chicago at the dawn of the 20th century and Emma Goldman and the ragi More...

0 comments like

Jul 29, 2011

Catherine added it

I agree with another reivewer on two points--the first that it is truely amazing that the author is writing in what is at least a second language, and the writing is lyrical. I also agree that the two stories, one of the past and another of the present, and the first is far more compelling than the second. Perhaps this is because the second is too close to the author's home, the events in Bosnia that led to his immigration to the US. The older story is the persecution that Jews faced inthe US More...

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Jul 26, 2011

Stuart added it

This book was original, absorbing and yet confusing. Billed as being the story of Lazarus Averbuch, murdered by the Chicago Chief of Police in 1908, and the research journey a century later of a writer, Vladimir Brik, planning to write Lazarus’ history, it evolved into many more stories than those two.

I had expected something like “the devil in the white city” with a chapter to each story, but instead, the two stories become intertwined, sharing chapters, switching stories from paragraph to pa More...

0 comments like

Mar 31, 2011

James rated it:

Aleksandar Hemon has been on my radar screen since The Question of Bruno, which I read a while ago and remembered quite fondly, but what with one thing and another, I let his works slide by me, and then, several months ago, I noticed The Lazarus Project remaindered in paperback, and I thought, oh, right, that's The Question of Bruno guy, and I bought it, and it sat on a pile of books by the front door, waiting for me to grab on my way to the subway.

(Oh, and yes, I've kept up with Hem More...

1 comment like (2 people liked it)

Jan 25, 2011

Darryl rated it:

*** “The Lazarus Project” by Alexsandar Hemon. Fiction. Mr. Hemon is a Bosnian-American, who came to America on a visit to Chicago, but was unable to return to Bosnia because of the Bosnian-Serbian war of the 90’s. Reviewers for the New York Times, the San Francisco Chronicle and the Los Angeles Times praised Hemon and his novel, with the comments, “extraordinary writer”, “virtuoso linguist, stylist and social observer”, and “a true original”. Not being qualified to agree or disagree, I will More...

0 comments like

Dec 18, 2010

Jennifer rated it:

I was interested in this book for a few different reasons:
1. The life of an immigrant is interesting to me. Often people immigrate because of wars. The process if painful- their children often adapt quite easily to a different language and culture, and can be embarrassed of their parents. Parents often don't understand the system, the language, and often don't have an advocate to help them adapt successfully. This can really impact the relationship between the two generations.
Th More...

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Nov 05, 2010

Jeff rated it:

I think what some (James Wood at The New Yorker, for example) must find new about this is the strain of bi- or transnational anti-Americanism in especially its account of progressive-era American tribalism, which the novel tries to equilibrate with the tribalism of the present-day neo-nationalistic movements -- Hezbollah, Hamas, what have you. The basic analogy is between terrorism in our present-day moment, our treatment of terror-suspects, for example at Abu Ghraib, and the treatment of suspe More...

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Oct 01, 2010

Angela rated it:

I think maybe this book is too smart for me? The gold fat seal on the front, declaring it a Pulitzer Prize/National Book Award finalist did help me with this selection. Set in two periods (turn of the century) and current day Chicago, two immigrant characters draw parallels between their struggle with what is it to be in a new country. The book feels segmented, like a short burst of memories or journal entries.. and you hardly care about the main character (which is written better than his clunk More...

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Sep 04, 2010

Nick rated it:

Hemon is that rarest of all writers, rarer still for being an immigrant, whose prose has vigor without losing purpose, who can build an intricate, time- and story-shifting plot without making it seem like unnecessary fireworks. And yet his prose retains a flavor of his East European mordancy, the wit of someone born in a country that no longer exists. The central character is Vladimir Brik, an immigrant like Hemon from Sarajevo who is fascinated with the real story of Lazarus Averbukh, a ni More...

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Apr 15, 2010

Stefan rated it:

With "The Lazarus Project," Aleksander Hemon establishes himself as a completely ignorable voice on the literary scene; a product of hype over substance; a lazy writer coasting on the unbelievable luck of winning a MacArthur grant, also known as a "genius grant." Hemon might be a genius, but he's definitely a bad writer.

The story certainly has possibilities. It simultaneously tells the story of a Jewish immigrant (Lazarus) murdered by a police chief in 1908 Chic More...

1 comment like (1 person liked it)

Apr 04, 2010

Casey rated it:

The Lazarus Project is superb. How someone born in Sarajevo and not publishing his first English story until 1995 wrote this piece of literature is unbelievable. This is literature. This is not a piece of fiction and describing it that way seems to dumb it down. This is of the highest quality of writing. Aleksandar Hemon is one of the best at his craft.

The Lazarus Project begins with a young Lazarus Averbuch visiting the home of the Chicago police chief. During this visit he is shot More...

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Mar 21, 2010

Thurston rated it:

Boy I disagree with others who felt Hemon's short stories were superior to this. I found this book with its tricky tightrope walk between Chicago in the early 1900's and modern day Eastern Europe (the Ukraine/Moldova/Romania) extremely rewarding. Whereas I "enjoyed" Hemon's shorter stories, I often felt hungry for more afterwards. Here Hemon's power and promise are sustained for nearly 300 challenging pages!

It's got a true crime feel from the titular Lazarus from the 1900' More...

1 comment like

Dec 06, 2009

Chris rated it:

hemon's novel received lavish praise from all the most prestigious book reviewers around. however, i can't say that i'm joining them in their love. the book includes two stories that unfold in alternating chapters. one, about title character Lazarus, a young eastern european who is mysteriously murdered in the home of the chicago police chief. the city and the country was in constant fear of unbridled anarchy, and his death was portrayed by the police force as a suspected anarchist getting h More...

1 comment like (2 people liked it)