The World and All That It Holds
von Aleksandar Hemon
352 Seiten; 198 mm x 130 mm; ab 18 Jahre
Sprache English
Main Market Ed.
2024 Macmillan Publishers International; Picador
ISBN 978-0-330-51579-5
Besprechung
A tour de force. Hemon has given us a story of love and war like no other Kamila Shamsie, author of Home Fire
Kurztext / Annotation
An epic, continent-spanning story of a world in convulsion, of millions broken between war, displacement and revolution, and of human bonds so strong, of love so absolute, that they stretch from Sarajevo to Shanghai without snapping, and conquer all.
Langtext
'This life-stuffed novel is Aleksandar Hemon's masterpiece' - David Mitchell, author of Cloud Atlas
The World and All That It Holds is the epic, cross-continental tale of a love so strong it conquers the Great War, revolution, and even death itself.
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 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, a summer stroll and idle fantasies 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 and Pinto's protector and lover.
Together, Pinto and Osman will escape the trenches and find themselves entangled with spies and Bolsheviks. As they travel over mountains and across deserts, from one world to another, all the way to Shanghai, it is Pinto's love for Osman that will truly survive.
'A staggering work of beauty and brutality' - Douglas Stuart, Booker Prize-winning author of Shuggie Bain and Young Mungo
Biografische Anmerkung zu den Verfassern
Aleksandar Hemon was born in Sarajevo and lives in Chicago. He is the author of The Question of Bruno, Nowhere Man, Love and Obstacles, and The Lazarus Project, which was a finalist for both the National Book Award and the National Book Critics Circle Award. His work also appears regularly in the New Yorker and Granta, among other publications.