On March 2, 1908, 19-year-old Lazarus Averbuch, a Jewish immigrant from Eastern Europe to Chicago, knocked on the front door of the house of George Shippy, the chief of Chicago police, for reasons lost to history. When Shippy came to the door, Averbuch offered him what he said was an important letter for him. But instead of taking the letter, Shippy shot Averbuch twice, killing him.
When Shippy released a statement casting the foreigner Averbuch as an anarchist who had intended to assassinate him, America was ready to agree. It was a time when Chicago was still recovering from the Haymarket riots; anarchism and, especially, foreign-tongued immigrants were the big scare of mainstream America. A new wave of xenophobia was already sweeping through Chicago and the rest of the country when the Averbuch shooting set off a tumult that would involve Emma Goldman, marches in the streets, and a rash of scare headlines from coast-to-coast.
Now, in the twenty-first century, a young writer in Chicago, Brik, also from Eastern Europe, becomes obsessed with Lazarus's story - what really happened, and why? In order to understand Lazarus, Brik and his friend Rora - who overflows with stories of his life as a Sarajevo war photographer - retrace Lazarus's path backward across Eastern Europe, through a history of pogroms and poverty, and through a present day of cheap mafiosi and cheaper prostitutes. The stories of Lazarus and Brik become inextricable 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.
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Praise for Aleksandar Hemon:
“Hemon can’t write a boring sentence, and the English language (which he adopted at a late age) is the richer for it. . . . Antic and ingenious.”
—Gary Shteyngart, The New York Times Book Review
“[With The Question of Bruno] Hemon proved himself as inventive as Nabokov or Salman Rushdie. He seemed, in other words, to possess the kind of bold talent that doesn’t come around very often. And in his follow-up book, Hemon again displays his prodigious gifts—nearly every sentence of this novel is infused with energy and wit. . . . A true original.”
—Los Angeles Times
“Now here’s a reason to get excited: a true work of art that’s as vast and mysterious as life itself. This tender, devastating book is evidence indeed that Hemon is a writer of rare artistry and dept.”
—Esquire
“An extraordinary writer: one who seems not simply gifted but necessary.”
—The New York Times
