Nowhere Man

by Aleksandar Hemon (Author)

• Used

  Hardcover
  2003

  $13.20

  The mind- and language-bending adventures of Hemon's endearing protagonist Jozef Pronek This is what we know about Jozef Pronek from reading of his exploits in The Question of Bruno. He is a young man from Sarajevo who arrived in the US in 1992, just in time to watch war break out back home on TV. Stranded in Chicago, he proved himself a charming and perceptive observer of - and participant in - American life. With Nowhere Man. Pronek, accidental urban nomad, gets his own book. From the grand causes of Jozef's adolescence - principally fighting to change the face of rock and roll and struggling to lose his virginity - up through a fleeting encounter with George Bush (the first) in Kiev, to enrolment in a Chicago English-language class and the glorious adventures of minimum-wage living, Pronek's experiences are at once touchingly familiar and bracingly out-of-the-ordinary. But the story of his life is not so simple as a series of global adventures. Pronek is continually haunted by an unseen observer, his movements chronicled by narrators with dubious motives-all of which culminates in a final episode that upends many of our assumptions about Pronek's identity, while illustrating precisely what it means to be a Nowhere Man.

• Used

  Paperback
  2004

  $15.60

• New

  Paperback
  2009

  $12.31

  'Aleksandar Hemon has established himself as that rare thing, an essential writer. Another small act of defiance against this narrowing world' - Observer . 'His language sings...I should not be surprised if Hemon wins the Nobel Prize at some point' - Giles Foden. In Aleksandar Hemon's electrifying first book, The Question of Bruno , Jozef Pronek left Sarajevo to visit Chicago in 1992, just in time to watch war break out at home on TV. Unable to return, he began to make his way in a foreign land and his adventures were unforgettable. Now Pronek, the accidental nomad, gets his own book, and startles us into yet more exhilarating ways of seeing the world anew. 'If the plot is mercury, quick and elusive, sentence by sentence and word for word, Aleksandar Hemon's writing is gold' - Times Literary Supplement . 'Downbeat but also hilarious, while the writing itself is astonishing' - Time Out . 'Hemon can't write a boring sentence, and the English language is the richer for it' - New York Times . 'Sheer exuberance, generosity and engagement with life' - Sunday Times .