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The World and All That It Holds: A Novel Hardcover – January 24, 2023
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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 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.
- Print length352 pages
- LanguageEnglish
- PublisherMCD
- Publication dateJanuary 24, 2023
- Dimensions5.75 x 1.15 x 8.55 inches
- ISBN-100374287708
- ISBN-13978-0374287702
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What's it about?
A sweeping story of love and survival set against the backdrop of World War I and the Bolshevik Revolution, following two soldiers on a journey from the trenches of Galicia to the deserts of Shanghai.Amazon editors say...

Hemon literally drags our hero through the trenches and across continents in a sweeping saga that reads like a classic.
Erin Kodicek, Amazon Editor
From the Publisher
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Editorial Reviews
Review
“The World and All That It Holds would be an audacious title for a book by anybody except God–or Aleksandar Hemon. . . the irrepressible voice of The World and All That It Holds glides along a cushion of poignancy buoyed by wry humor. From start to finish, no matter what else he’s up to, Hemon is telling a tale about the resilience of true love.”
―RON CHARLES, The Washington Post
“Love is not the engine of history, but it certainly makes for an indispensable source of auxiliary power in the historical novel… In this novel idyll and ordeal are not stable categories, but slide past each other.”
―ADAM MARS-JONES, The New York Times Book Review
“Hemon’s writing is both gripping and lucid. He creates this work around such meticulous texture that the reader can stand alongside Pinto, and feel the cities as if they were with him… The World And All That It Holds is a book that will resonate with readers because it shows how a life with purpose is one that is constant motion."
―EDWARD BANCHS, Pittsburgh Post-Gazette
“Aleksandar Hemon’s The World and All That It Holds is one of the finest novels I’ve ever read, and like all great stories, it refuses to be pigeonholed. It’s a road novel, an immigrant tale, a ghost story, a family portrait, a mystery, a historical epic, a war novel, and yes, a love story―it is all that and more, a feat of
unfettered literary bravura. In short, a masterpiece.”
―RABIH ALAMEDDINE, author of The Wrong End of the Telescope
"Hemonites rejoice! The master is back and he has forged a remarkable tale of love and war alongside his own 20th Century Silk Road. From Sarajevo to Shanghai, every sentence, every paragraph is a sensuous and often hilarious delight. Not a Hemonite yet? I envy you your very first encounter with one of the world's greatest writers."
―GARY SHTEYNGART, author of Our Country Friends
"The World and All That It Holds is a twisting, turning epic rooted in love in all its forms; an odyssey of statelessness; a haunted museum of history ranging from Sarajevo to Shanghai and Jerusalem; and an apothecary of wit, folklore and unexpectable sentences. This life-stuffed novel is Aleksandar Hemon’s masterpiece.”
―DAVID MITCHELL, author of Cloud Atlas
"The World and All that It Holds is an explosive novel. Bursting with energy, wits, and insights, it’s an epic meditation on history, philosophy, and human conditions. Aleksandar Hemon once again proves him to be one of our most innovative and invigorating novelists."
―YIYUN LI, author of The Book of Goose
“This book is a refuge. Amid the catastrophe and unimaginable loss, you can still find heartbreaking kindness; you can still hear songs and laughter; still know the tender brush of a lover’s whiskered cheek. Every page folds itself around you, as comforting as an embrace, and in those pages, you will feel Aleksandar Hemon’s heart beating beside yours.”
―LANA WACHOWSKI, filmmaker
“The World And All That It Holds is a masterwork of the epic and the intimate. I lost myself to this tale of Sarajevans drawn into the assassination of the Archduke Ferdinand and their fight to survive in the war that followed. It is a staggering work of beauty and brutality, a testament to love, family, and the ties that call us home.”
―DOUGLAS STUART, author of Shuggie Bain
"An astoundingly expansive new novel form one of my all-time favorite writers. The World and All That It Holds is at once a heartbreaking love story and a thrilling history of twentieth-century Eurasia. It's an amazing accomplishment of epic history and personal drama."
―JESSE EISENBERG
About the Author
Product details
- Publisher : MCD (January 24, 2023)
- Language : English
- Hardcover : 352 pages
- ISBN-10 : 0374287708
- ISBN-13 : 978-0374287702
- Item Weight : 1.01 pounds
- Dimensions : 5.75 x 1.15 x 8.55 inches
- Best Sellers Rank: #522,050 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
- #1,236 in Military Historical Fiction
- #3,880 in War Fiction (Books)
- #19,283 in Literary Fiction (Books)
- Customer Reviews:
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Learn more how customers reviews work on AmazonCustomers say
Customers find the book brilliant, intense, and thrilling. They also describe the plot as tender and crushing. However, some find the readability difficult with frequent excursions into Ladino.
AI-generated from the text of customer reviews
Customers find the book brilliant, compelling, and worth every effort. They also say it's a superb work on the world.
"Aleksandar Hemon's immersive new novel is brilliant and breathtaking, intense and thrilling and probably one of the greatest books to start 2023...." Read more
"...But the book is so engrossing, so compelling it never occurred to me to stop reading...." Read more
"...with its frequent excursions into Spaniel (Ladino), but it is well worth the effort." Read more
"The book is perfect and I am happily surprised to have received it so quickly. Thank you!" Read more
Customers find the plot brilliant, breathtaking, sweet, tender, and confusing.
"Aleksandar Hemon's immersive new novel is brilliant and breathtaking, intense and thrilling and probably one of the greatest books to start 2023...." Read more
"...The genuine love displayed in the novel is so tender and crushing...." Read more
"...A truly great book. Sad and lonely and confusing and sweet and loving." Read more
Customers find the book difficult and slow to read at times. They also mention that the frequent excursions into Spanish make the book very difficult to understand.
"...The reading is demanding, mainly because the writer insists on avoiding any translation of some texts and brief dialogues in different languages...." Read more
"...Hemon's writing but his use of untranslated phrases makes this a very difficult and slow read at times. What am I missing? Is this essential?..." Read more
"...It is not an easy book to read, with its frequent excursions into Spaniel (Ladino), but it is well worth the effort." Read more
"I see I am not alone thinking this book is difficult to read, peppered as it is with words from a language that is going to be foreign to most...." Read more
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I'm somewhat multilingual, but it's not always clear what the languages are and I am SURE that Google doesn't do Spanjol! (Some of the phrases in Spanjol I understand but others are very obscure. Spanjol is a form of Judeo-Spanish spoken in the Balkans that developed in Ottoman times. It's basically medieval Spanish with many loan words from Hebrew, Turkish, and southern Slavic languages.) Just trying to guess which southern Slavic language Hemon favors is a puzzle. Is it Serbian? Croatian? Bosnian? One of the others? Then there is Turkish, not one of the languages most English-speakers are familiar with. Assuming it IS Turkish. Could it be a word from one of the other Turkic languages that dominate Central Asia? Is it Uzbek? HELP!!!
Please, Alex, in your next work continue to dazzle us with your linguistic range, but give us lesser mortals some hints and clues, or just translate what you're saying directly, so we can savor the flavor of the original thought but still get the jist of what you're trying to tell us!
Most of the book is so brilliantly written as to be mesmerizing, and it swept me along, page after page, eager to read more. HOWEVER, and this is a HUGE CAVEAT and DRAWBACK, the book contains numerous, frustrating, distracting words and entire lines and phrases of text in varying foreign languages that interrupt the story’s flow so as to have made me want to stop reading at the beginning of the book and made it tiresome at times. I tried looking up some of the words, but even that was difficult; a glossary by the author would have been helpful. Finally, I had to decide just to skip over and ignore these words and phrases so as to enjoy the whole of the book. If it weren’t for these annoying distractions, I would call this book a masterpiece.








