Nowhere Man

Reviews

“One of literature’s most engaging lost young men since Augie March…Hemon can’t write a boring sentence, and the English language…is the richer for it.”

“Hemon’s fractured story will haunt you long after you want it to, as you slowly realize that just because the last sentence ended with a period, all that was said before continues.”

“A virtuoso linguist, stylist, and social observer…Hemon delivers a searing, mordantly funny novel…The angst-ridden, horny, adolescent Balkan he depicts is deeply human, totally irresistible, and often hilarious, and by turns culturally specific and universal.”

“A charmingly discombobulated take on life and language…Hemon makes ordinary occurrences read like psychic disturbances.”

“Jozef Pronek, the quirky Sarajevan who captured the imagination of readers in Hemon’s acclaimed story collection gets full-length treatment in this acutely self-aware and tender first novel…A wild, twisty read, and Hemon’s inimitable voice and the wry urgency of his storytelling should cement his reputation as a talented young writer.”

“An unusual structure, along with a striking pictorial and metaphoric imagination, offers distinctive literary pleasures in this genuinely original first novel by the Bosnian-American author…Think of the gifted Hemon as a kinder and gentler—and infinitely funnier—Jerzy Kosinski. A wry, touching chronicle of the misadventures of a stranger in several strange lands. Don’t miss it.”

“This episodic tale combines a tender musicality and somewhat sardonic affection for humanity with piercing insights into the sorrows of displacement and alienation…Hemon, who possesses a diabolical sense of humor and a wickedly visceral sensibility, and who handles English as though it were nitroglycerine, considers the precariousness of existence, the continual revision of identity and dreams that immigrant life demands, and the ever-present shadow of death.”

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