The Lazarus Project - Dark Publications

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Editorial Reviews:

Amazon.com Review
Amazon Best of the Month, May 2008: America has a richer literary landscape since Aleksandar Hemon, stranded in the United States in 1992 after war broke out in his native Sarajevo, adopted Chicago as his new home. He completed his first short story within three years of learning to write in English, and since then his work has appeared in The New Yorker, Esquire, and The Paris Review and in two acclaimed books, The Question of Bruno and Nowhere Man. In The Lazarus Project, his most ambitious and imaginative work yet, Hemon brings to life an epic narrative born from a historical event: the 1908 killing of Lazarus Averbuch, a 19-year-old Jewish immigrant who was shot dead by George Shippy, the chief of Chicago police, after being admitted into his home to deliver an important letter. The mystery of what really happened that day remains unsolved (Shippy claimed Averbuch was an anarchist with ill intent) and from this opening set piece Hemon springs a century ahead to tell the story of Vladimir Brik, a Bosnian-American writer living in Chicago who gets funding to travel to Eastern Europe and unearth what really happened. The Lazarus Project deftly weaves the two stories together, cross-cutting the aftermath of Lazarus's death with Brik's journey and the tales from his traveling partner, Rora, a Bosnian war photographer. And while the novel will remind readers of many great books before it--Ragtime, The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier & Clay, Everything Is Illuminated--it is a masterful literary adventure that manages to be grand in scope and intimate in detail. It's an incredibly rewarding reading experience that's not to be missed. --Brad Thomas Parsons

Product Description
In two collections of stories, The Question of Bruno and the NBCC-finalist Nowhere Man, Aleksandar Hemon has earned unmatched literary acclaim and a reputation as one of the English languages most original and moving wordsmiths. In The Lazarus Project, Hemon has turned these talents to an embracing novel that intertwines haunting historical atmosphere and detail with sharp and shimmeringsometimes hilarious, sometimes heartbreakingcontemporary storytelling.

On March 2, 1908, nineteen-year-old Lazarus Averbuch, a recent Jewish immigrant from Eastern Europe to Chicago, knocked on the front door of the house of George Shippy, the chief of Chicago police. When Shippy came to the door, Averbuch offered him what he said was an important letter. Instead of taking the letter, Shippy shot Averbuch twice, killing him. When Shippy released a statement casting Averbuch as a would-be anarchist assassin and agent of foreign political operatives, he all but set off a city and a country already simmering with ethnic and political tensions.

Now, in the twenty-first century, a young writer in Chicago, Brik, also from Eastern Europe, becomes obsessed with Lazaruss storywhat really happened, and why? In order to understand Averbuch, Brik and his friend Rorawho overflows with stories of his life as a Sarajevo war photographerretrace Averbuchs path across Eastern Europe, through a history of pogroms and poverty, and through a present-day landscape of cheap mafiosi and cheaper prostitutes. The stories of Averbuch and Brik become inextricably entwined, augmented by the photographs that Rora takes on their journey, creating a truly original, provocative, and entertaining novel that will confirm Hemon once and for all as one of the most dynamic and essential literary voices of our time.

Customer Reviews: Read 6 more reviews...

4 out of 5 stars

Quirky, inventive, and rich May 3, 2008
76 out of 84 found this review helpful

It must be both thrilling and anxiety-provoking for a young writer to find himself compared to Nabokov, Conrad and Rushdie with only one novel and a short story collection to his credit. Aleksandar Hemon, descendant of Ukrainian emigrants to Yugoslavia and a native of Sarajevo, Bosnia, arrived in Chicago for a 1992 visit just ahead of the Balkan war. It took him only three years to begin publishing stories in English, eight to issue his first book and 12 to win a MacArthur Foundation "genius grant."

Aside from the trick of writing in a non-native language, Hemon's not quite in a class with Nabokov and Conrad just yet. But there's no doubt he's become a fluent writer in English, and one that uses the language to unique and pleasing effects. Parallel plots concern the brief life of Lazarus Averbuch, a Jew and recent East European transplant who escaped a pogrom in Moldova only to be mistaken for an anarchist and shot down at 19 by Chicago Police in 1908; and Vladimir Brik, a Bosnian writer with Ukrainian roots who travels to the Ukraine and Sarajevo to research a book on Averbuch as well as his own ancestry.

This story is enlivened by Bosnian and Jewish jokes, and crucial catchphrases that grow in resonance with each reprise: "Home is where somebody notices your absence"; "I am just like everybody else because there is nobody like me in the whole world." The novel also notes the parallels between the U.S. war against anarchism a century ago and its war against terrorism today, without belaboring them.

The Lazarus Project is a story filled with death, despair, missed connections and aching ironies, that somehow manages to be full of humor and hope -- a neat trick whose secret must lie somewhere in Hemon's skilled use of his adopted language.

4 out of 5 stars

the lonely narrator May 27, 2008
11 out of 11 found this review helpful

I initially disliked this book: a bit too self-indulgently Artsy with the proliferation of photos and the repetition of imagery (enough with the cans of sardines, already!). But, as you progress through this novel, the true beauty comes out -- and that is in the creation of a narrative voice that is self-aware, self-deprecating, occasionally annoying and almost cataclysmically alone. It is a brilliant study of displacement and solitude, of yearning for and ambivalence towards "home." And a fascinating view on the implications of "storytelling" in all its forms.

5 out of 5 stars

History Meets Fiction In The Balkans May 24, 2008
10 out of 12 found this review helpful

Mr. Hemon has taken the historical mystery of the death of Lazarus Averbuch in 1908 and created a rich novel around it. His fictional hero, Vladimir Brik, is lost in America culture and in his life, and decides to solve the mystery behind the circumstances of Lazarus' death. The name Lazarus is a methaphor for the author who himself left the Balkans in the civil war of the 1990's, for Brik and for the New Testament Lazarus. Mr. Hemon is clearly writing about his former homeland when Brik returns there to solve the mystery. This is not a murder mystery (though it functions as one) but the tale of a man seeking his salvation and meaning of his life through the completion of a quest.

5 out of 5 stars

Bubbles and pops with originality and humor May 29, 2008
10 out of 14 found this review helpful

One hundred years ago, a young man named Lazarus Averbuch, a Bosnian Jew and new immigrant to Chicago, knocks on the door of George Shippy, the Chief of Police. He is shot dead, accused of anarchist ties thanks to attending lectures by Emma Goldman. His wife Olga is forced to pick up the pieces alone: to find some solace and justice for Lazarus, to survive as a widowed woman, and to manage the ethnic tensions of living in a city with little tolerance for Jews, unwelcome immigrants and heterodox politics.

Brik, a modern newspaper columnist and Bosnian immigrant, becomes fascinated with this true story and decides to uncover more of its censored history. Feeling generally displaced by the path of his life, an uneager participant in an alienating marriage, he jumps at a grant that would allow him to travel and research both Lazarus's heritage and his own. Not to say he has particularly strong ties to Bosnia, but he capitalizes on the project to supplement his only half-hearted sense of immigrant otherness: "Just like everybody else, I enjoy the unearned nobility of belonging to one nation and not the other; I like deciding who can join us, who is out, and who is to be welcome when visiting."

So off to Bosnia! In the hopes of finding some "home," to lay down any firm ties (be they Bosnian or American), Brik travels with Rora, his decidedly Bosnian friend and tour guide. The original purpose of the trip --- a fact-finding expedition to Lazarus's hometown --- is soon left behind as Brik visits sites from his childhood and elsewhere in order to escape his American life and find something resembling a cultural identity. Rora is more or less like every oh-so-Eastern-European local, with an alien sense of humor and street-smart sensibility most recently incarnated in Jonathan Safran Foer's EVERYTHING IS ILLUMINATED. While certainly the most stereotypical character in the novel, Rora's jokes and stories from his war reporting career brilliantly pepper Brik's already bizarre road trip. Rora and Brik's exchanges are both wildly comedic and deeply poignant as Brik gains some sort of understanding, even if he doesn't like what it is.

Complementing this narrative is a constant throwback to Olga in 1908, also trying to solve the mystery of Lazarus's death. Through brief imagined letters to her mother and conversations with Lazarus's friend hiding in an outhouse from the police, she is forced to come to terms with the fact of her immigrant otherness. This portion of the novel is told in a disarming present tense that makes even its historical parts come to life. Aleksandar Hemon absolutely nails the atmosphere of 1908 Chicago, showing with an impressive economy of words the scope of what has changed and what has remained the same.

At the heart of both these stories is Hemon's incredible sense of style. His prose bubbles and pops with originality and humor --- one-liners convey whole images and extended descriptions hone in on single moments. His dialogue manages to be completely naturalistic while also conforming to his stylized traveler/historian/Bosnian road trip aesthetic. And in his non-narrative passages, there is the perfect amount of reasonable self-consciousness to complement the seriousness: "What I like about America, I said, is that there is no space left for useless metaphysical questions. There are no parallel universes there. Everything is what it is, it's easy to see and understand everything." This claim rings both true and unbearably false, as Lazarus's, Olga's and Brik's experiences demonstrate. But witty paradoxes like this make up the soul of the text, which goes beyond the typical story of the immigrant experience into larger questions of how to find one's home, and what to do when one gets there.

--- Reviewed by Max Falkowitz

2 out of 5 stars

A GREAT STORY BURIED BENEATH LOTS OF 'METAPHYSICAL ABUSE' July 1, 2008
10 out of 16 found this review helpful

With "The Lazarus Project," wordsmith and Sarajevo-born Aleksandar Hemon takes the real-life, early 1900s murder of a Jewish American at the hands of the Chicago police - the chief of police, no less - and uses it as a point of departure to explore his own immigrant identity. The resulting work of fiction then cuts back and forth between the more engaging, true-crime storyline and the modern-day events, which see Hemon researching the Lazarus tragedy. The murder and its aftermath are constantly interrupted by Hemon's own postmodern shenanigans until it gets buried beneath lots of - to borrow one of Hemon's own phrases - "metaphysical abuse." Hemon's stand-in narrator resorts to the usual self-reflexive narrative tricks and employs the standard self-deprecatory humor, along with a heavy dose of self-loathing. And, as usual, it all ends with a moment of renewal and redemption, thanks to the power of storytelling. (Hemon wanders dangerously close to Amy Tan territory.) It's a pity that the talented writer didn't tell the story straight because he clearly did his research. In fact, he has an irritating tendency to quote verbatim long passages from real newspaper clippings, even when describing the contents of a room or crime scene. Couldn't Hemon have used his own words? Even the photographs, some of them actual shots from the early 20th century, that precede each chapter start to seem like a narrative crutch to build mood and atmosphere.

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