Join Professor of Creative Writing and celebrated novelist Aleksandar Hemon for a conversation about his latest book, The World and All That It Holds.
About the Book
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.
About the Author
Aleksandar Hemon is the author of The Lazarus Project, which was a finalist for the 2008 National Book Award and the National Book Critics Circle Award, of the memoir My Parents: An Introduction / This Does not Belong to You, and of three books of short stories: The Question of Bruno; Nowhere Man, which was also a finalist for the National Book Critics Circle Award; and Love and Obstacles. He teaches at Princeton University’s Lewis Center for the Arts.
Tickets + Details
The event is free and open to the public. Join the conversation in person at the Princeton Public Library or online via livestream. View registration information and livestream link
This event is presented by Labyrinth Books in partnership with the Princeton Public Library and is cosponsored by Princeton’s Lewis Center for the Arts and Humanities Council.
