The Question of Bruno: Stories (Paperback)

Perhaps because he is from Eastern Europe and had been a writer in his native language before he learned English, he has often been compared to Nabokov. While the comparison is simplistic, it is seemingly suggested by Hemon himself, at one point, when he related to Salon Magazine how he learned English: "I read 'Lolita' in English and underlined the words I didn't know." However, unlike Nabokov, who circulated largely in academic circles, Hemon spent two and a half years canvassing for Greenpeace, where he met and spoke with thousands of people of every stripe, developing an ear for English as it is actually spoken. It is not surprising, then, that Hemon's writing is less academic and obscure than that of Nabokov.

"The Question of Bruno" is a remarkably good collection of stories that continually engage the reader. Like many first works of fiction, the stories, while fictional, appear to draw heavily from Hemon's own experiences, particularly those of living under Marshall Tito's communism and the implosion of Yugoslavia which followed Tito's death, of growing up in a family with roots in both Serbia and the Ukraine, and, ultimately, living and writing in a language not his own. Hemon's writing is vivid, intelligent and darkly humorous, his style marked by keen description and uniquely discordant turns of phrase that sometimes seem to reflect his alienation from the English language in which he writes as much as his remarkable skill as a writer.

The best of the stories in this collection is "A Coin," a tale of Aida, a woman living in Sarajevo under siege, and a man, presumably Hemon, living in Chicago, where he worries about Aida, about whether she is still among the living. Thus, Aida relates what it's like in Sarajevo: "Suppose there is a Point A and a Point B and that, if you want to get from Point A to Point B, you have to pass through an open space clearly visible to a skillful sniper." And Hemon, the author, relates from the disconnected safety of his dingy Chicago apartment: "I open my mailbox-a long tunnel dead-ending with a dark square-and I find Aida's letter, I shiver with dread. What terrifies me is that, as I rip the exhausted envelope, she may be dead. . . I dread the fact that life is always slower than death and I have been chosen, despite my weakness, against my will, to witness the discrepancy." "A Coin" is a remarkable story which vividly captures both the hellish, contingent existence of Aida in war-torn Sarajevo and the dark anxiety of her Chicago correspondent.

"The Sorge Spy Ring" is another outstanding story, the fictional childhood memoir of a boy growing up in Sarajevo during the time of Tito, a boy fascinated with spies who develops an elaborate fantasy that his father is a spy. It is a fantasy that seemingly becomes grim reality when Marshal Tito's security police appear in the middle of the night and take the boy's father away. He is released from prison several years later, "diagnosed with brain cancer, curled into an old man, with most of his teeth missing." Longer than the story itself is the subtext, a series of forty footnotes that relate snippets of the biography of Richard Sorge, a real-life Soviet spy who achieved high rank in the German army and the Nazi Party and was eventually executed by Japanese security police in 1944.

"Exchange of Pleasant Words" is a wonderful fictional memoir of the Hemon family history and a Hemon family reunion of sorts. "Inspired by the success of the Sarajevo Olympiad and the newly established ancient family history, the family council, headed righteously by my father, decided to have an epic get-together, which was to be held only once, and was to be recorded as the Hemoniad."

"Blind Josef Pronek & Dead Souls," which runs to nearly eighty pages and may be characterized as a novella, tells the story of a man named Pronek who emigrates to Chicago from Sarajevo in 1992. The story appears to be, of course, the thinly fictionalized, episodic story of the author himself. While somewhat uneven in quality, the story within the novella titled "Iceberg Lettuce, Romaine Lettuce" is a wonderfully humorous narrative of Pronek's first job in the United States that displays Hemon's writing at its best.

"The Life and Work of Alphonse Kauders" is a series of short, factual statements about a character named Alphonse Kauders, who appears Zelig-like (as one reviewer has aptly put it) at various important moments in history and with various historical personages. It is a humorous and enigmatic piece that is accompanied by a glossary providing background on its referents.

Finally, there are three shorter stories. "Imitation of Life" is a wonderful little memoir of childhood recollection, fantasy and film. "The Accordion" is an almost photographic tale of the assassination of Archduke Franz Ferdinand. "Islands," the first story in the book, is another reminiscence of a childhood trip from Yugoslavia to the coast that suffers from excessive and discordant use of language. It is the weakest of the writing in this collection, a story that has a kind of strangeness that apparently derives as much from Hemon's alienation from the English language as it does from any innate skill as a writer.