The Question of Bruno (Signed First Edition)

HEMON, Aleksandar

ISBN 10: 038549923X / ISBN 13: 9780385499231

Published by Nan A. Talese / Doubleday, New York, 2000

About this Item

First edition and first printing. Hardcover. 230 pages. A collection of short stories. A clean and tight very near fine copy in a very near fine dust jacket. Signed by Hemon on the title page in the year of publication.

Seller Inventory # 209642

Bibliographic Details

• Title: The Question of Bruno (Signed First Edition)
• Publisher: Nan A. Talese / Doubleday, New York
• Publication Date: 2000
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 038549923X
• ISBN 13: 9780385499231
• Binding: Hardcover
• Edition: First Edition.
• Dust Jacket Condition: dj
• Weight: 2 pounds
• Signed: Signed
• Seller catalogs:
  • Literature

About this title

Synopsis

The Question of Bruno is a novella and stories that are linked by characters, by locations, by interwoven substories, and by a literary voice so strong and sensitive that no matter how many guises it adopts, the stories cannot help but gather momentum and join together as a powerfully inventive whole.

Set in Chicago and Sarajevo, it is a book about the trauma of war, about how an exile makes a new life in a new land.  But above all it is a work of impressive range, stunning accomplishment, and deep humor. In the novella "Blind Jozef Pronek and Dead Souls," a young Sarajevan travels to the United States and decides to stay when he sees war break out at home on CNN--he goes on to experience a starkly contemporary version of  "coming to America." In "The Sorge Spy Ring," a young boy in communist Yugoslavia becomes convinced his father is a spy because of the strange toys he brings back from Moscow.

Whether Hemon is writing of the assassination of Archduke Ferdinand or of a family trip to the beach, of an immigrant in the United States fired from a sandwich shop for an inability to distinguish between romaine and iceberg lettuce, or of the art of dodging sniper fire in a modern city under siege, he is both painfully funny and heartbreakingly sad. He writes with a wit, freshness, and true originality that prove him one of the most talented and skilled writers of his generation.

About the Author

Aleksandar Hemon was born in Sarajevo in 1964.  He moved to Chicago in 1992 with only a basic command of English.  He began writing in English in 1995.  His fiction has appeared in The New Yorker, Granta, and Best American Short Stories 1999, among other publications, and will appear in the forthcoming Best American Short Stories 2000.  He continues to live in Chicago with his wife, Lisa Stodder, a Chicago native.