The World and All That It Holds: A Novel by Aleksandar Hemon, Aleksandar Hemon

The World and All That It Holds: A Novel
Aleksandar Hemon, Aleksandar Hemon
Page: 352
Format: pdf, ePub, mobi, fb2
ISBN: 9780374287702
Publisher: Farrar, Straus and Giroux
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Overview

Notes From Your Bookseller One for the philosopher, The World and All That It Holds is Aleksandar Hemon at his finest. Spanning decades and continents, this story contains multitudes, making it perfect for lovers of fiction (especially historical fiction) to pick up. At its core is an examination of love of all kinds, but this book is so much more, exploring history, philosophy, and death in a hilarious and heartbreaking way. A modern classic. The World and All That It Holds—in all its hilarious, heartbreaking, erotic, philosophical glory—showcases Aleksandar Hemon’s celebrated talent at its pinnacle. It is a grand, tender, sweeping story that spans decades and continents. It cements Hemon as one of the boldest voices in fiction.

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 estimable 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 from the high shelf, a summer stroll, and idle fantasies about passersby 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; Pinto’s protector and lover.

Together, Pinto and Osman will escape the trenches, survive near-certain death, tangle with spies and Bolsheviks. Over mountains and across deserts, from one world to another, all the way to Shanghai, it is Pinto’s love for Osman—with the occasional opiatic interlude—that keeps him going.

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