Rate this book

Amore E Ostacoli (2008)

by Aleksandar Hemon(Favorite Author)

3.81 of 5 Votes: 1

ISBN

8858415191 (ISBN13: 9788858415191)

languge

English

genre

Fiction

publisher

Einaudi

review 1: In this remarkable work, a series of linked, episodic short stories, the narrator tells a series of tales of his alienated youth, somewhat in the mode of Catcher in the Rye, though it jumps in time and locale in a way that evokes Slaughterhouse Five. He always seems to be out of place, and feeling it, whether in the Congo (his father is on a diplomatic mission), or in the Yugoslavia-that-was (his father sends him to Slovenia to buy a freezer), or in Chicago, where he is stranded in 1991 by the start of the siege in his home town, Sarajevo.And in many of the stories, he links up with older, jaded, unforgettable guides, who are out of place and time as well. An American rogue (or rogue agent) in Congo, a demented Bosnian poet in Chicago, a gang of boys in his childhood who w... moreage war over a barren playground in a metaphor for the war to come.His prose is sparse but vivid, quirky, never dull. "When America settled into its mold of patriotic vulgarity," he writes in one of the later stories, "I began to despair, for everything reminded me of Bosnia in 1991. The War on Terror took me to the verge of writing poetry again, but I knew better."These may be sketches for a much larger work as this author grows and expands his craft. Not many authors can write in English as a second language and achieve this much so quickly, but Mr. Hemon does. As Joseph Conrad once did. His future work will be something to see, and for now, this book will be a worthwhile trip along that road.
review 2: I think that this book was really worth reading and that is saying something as I started really disliking it but I soon developed an attachment to the author and his scattered life. Even though it is written in a most confusing way, he is documenting parts of his live in the form of short stories and there is no timeline or relevance as to how he organised them and at sometimes I was confused at which point of his life these occurrences where happening and I hated so many things he chose to write about but overall I enjoyed this book. I had more to say about it but I postponed this review for so long that i forgot what I wanted to say. I think it was a slow read it does not really pick up or get greatly interesting until the last two chapters, which also were my favourite of all the stories in the book. less

Download links for: Amore e ostacoli

Advertising