Nowhere Man

by Aleksandar Hemon

A native of Sarajevo, where he spends his adolescence trying to become Bosnia's answer to John Lennon, Jozef Pronek comes to the United States in 1992 - just in time to watch war break out in his country, but too early to be a genuine refugee. Indeed, Jozef's typical answer to inquiries about his origins and ethnicity is, "I am complicated."

And so he proves to be - not just to himself, but to the revolving series of shadowy but insightful narrators who chart his progress from Sarajevo to Chicago; from a hilarious encounter with the first President Bush to a somewhat more grave one with a heavily armed Serb whom he has been hired to serve with court papers. Moving, disquieting, and exhilarating in its virtuosity, Nowhere Man is the kaleidoscopic portrait of a magnetic young man stranded in America by the war in Bosnia.

Genres: Fiction, Novels, Literary Fiction, Contemporary, Literature, Short Stories, 21st Century

256 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 2002

About the author

Aleksandar Hemon is a Bosnian American writer known for his short stories and novels that explore issues of exile, identity, and home through characters drawn from Hemon’s own experience as an immigrant.

Hemon was raised in Sarajevo, where his father was an engineer and his mother was an accountant. After graduating from the University of Sarajevo with a degree in literature in 1990, he worked as a journalist with the Sarajevan youth press. In 1992 he participated in a journalist exchange program that took him to Chicago. Hemon intended to stay in the United States only briefly, for the duration of the program, but, when war broke out in his home country, he applied for and was granted status as a political refugee in the United States.

In Chicago Hemon worked a series of jobs, including as a bike messenger and a door-to-door canvasser, while improving his knowledge of English and pursuing a graduate degree at Northwestern University. Three years after arriving in the United States, he wrote his first short story in English, “The Sorge Spy Ring.” Together with several other short stories and the novella “Blind Jozef Pronek & Dead Souls,” it was published in the collection The Question of Bruno in 2000, the same year Hemon became an American citizen. Like much of Hemon’s published work, these stories were largely informed by Hemon’s own immigrant experience in Chicago. Hemon brought back Jozef Pronek, the protagonist from his earlier novella, with Nowhere Man: The Pronek Fantasies (2002), the story of a young man growing up in Sarajevo who later attempts to navigate a new life in Chicago while working minimum-wage jobs. The book, like the rest of Hemon’s work, was notable for the author’s inventive use of the English language. He was awarded a MacArthur Foundation “genius grant” in 2004.

The Lazarus Project (2008) intertwined two stories of eastern European immigrants to Chicago. Vladimir Brik, a Bosnian immigrant writer and the novel’s narrator, becomes obsessed with a murder case from nearly a century earlier in which Lazarus Averbuch, a young Russian Jew, was shot and killed by Chicago’s police chief. Hemon received much critical acclaim for the novel, which was a finalist for a National Book Award. He followed this with Love and Obstacles (2009), a collection of short stories narrated by a young man who leaves Sarajevo for the United States when war breaks out in his home country. The Making of Zombie Wars (2015) chronicles the quotidian difficulties of a workaday writer attempting to finish a screenplay about a zombie invasion.

Hemon also cowrote the screenplay for The Matrix Resurrections (2021), the fourth installment in the popular sci-fi Matrix series. His other works included the memoirs The Book of My Lives (2013) and My Parents: An Introduction/This Does Not Belong to You (2019). The latter book consists of two volumes.

Reviews

[Orsodimondo · Rating 3 out of 5]

TU CHIAMALE, SE VUOI: SUGGESTIONI


Jens Lucking, l’immagine di copertina.

Il titolo del romanzo nasce da qui
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=93rSX...
e non potrebbe esserci migliore dedica.
Jozef Pronek, il protagonista di questo romanzo (anche se Hemon ce la mette tutta per depistarci e farci credere che al centro della storia ci siano altri personaggi) era già apparso in un racconto intitolato Blind Jozef Pronek & Dead Souls, che è il nome della sua band di blues in chiave bosniaca, contenuto nella sua raccolta d’esordio The Question of Bruno-Spie di Dio.

Il fatto che Jozef Pronek stia così tanto a cuore ad Aleksandar Hemon ritengo sia perché è molto palesemente il suo alter ego.
La biografia dell’autore e quella del personaggio di carta si sovrappongono e coincidono in molti punti.


Jens Lucking.

E così, mi chiedo, ma questo libro sarebbe mai giunto tra le mie mani, mi sarebbe mai stato regalato, se i fatti della vita di Aleksandar Hemon non venissero sempre prima della e davanti alla sua opera? Se la sua letteratura non fosse immediatamente illuminata dalla sua biografia?
Probabilmente no.

Perché è indubbio che saperlo bosniaco di Sarajevo, emigrato a Chicago, prima con una borsa di studio, poi rimastovi per evitare quella che stava succedendo a casa sua - l’amore per il rock, l’essere stato conduttore radiofonico – e ancora di più, il suo sradicamento, lo scrivere in un’altra lingua, il senso di spaesamento che la sua biografia racconta, tutto questo costituisce una forte suggestione.
E spinge a volerlo leggere, per cercare (e, possibilmente, anche trovare), tra le sue parole il suo vissuto.


Nick Harwart: Bosnia Blues.

E, quindi, queste pagine sono all’insegna dello sradicamento. E straniamento. E spaesamento. E smarrimento.
E della perdita.
Tutte sensazioni che la distanza da casa, casa che è un campo di battaglia, e quindi impossibile ritornare, la nuova terra con la sua nuova lingua, tutte sensazioni che situazioni così amplificano, esaltano, potenziano.

Lo paragonano a Nabokov, ma credo ciò avvenga più che altro perché Hemon parla spesso e bene di Nabokov, lo indica come il suo scrittore preferito.

Il problema è che questo romanzo sembra l’assemblaggio di qualcos’altro. Non perché costituito da materiali diversi, non è un’altra serie di racconti raccolti a mo’ di romanzo: piuttosto perché sembra quasi che la mano di chi scrive non sia sempre la stessa. È slegato, scoordinato, manca forse di un buon lavoro editoriale: il protagonista Josef per primo sembra scritto da mani diverse, non si assomiglia affatto da un capitolo all’altro.
Avrebbe anche giovato un po’ di indulgenza in meno sulle gag comiche, a volte a livello di barzelletta, e sull’elenco degli odori, che sono 99,99 volte su cento sgradevoli e rivoltanti, e viene da chiedersi perché esistano solo quelli.


Nick Harwart: Bosnia Blues.

Questa la mia impressione nonostante la critica USA lo abbia apprezzato molto (sicuramente molto più di me) e il libro sia arrivato finalista in un premio importante (finalista al National Book Critics Circle del 2002)

Il primo io narrante non ha nome, si sa solo che è di Sarajevo, vive a Chicago e cerca lavoro. Il suo racconto cambia oggetto, da se stesso a Jozef Pronek, altro bosniaco di Sarajevo domiciliato a Chicago, di cui il nostro primo narratore, per sua stessa ammissione, dovrebbe in realtà saperne molto meno di quel che ci spiffera. Ma, soprattutto, ne fa un ritratto molto diverso da quello del primo capitolo, dove Jozef sembrava essere un po’ mammola e si lasciava menare da quelli del palazzo di fronte, tra i quali c’era l’oracolo parlante.
Nel terzo si passa in Ucraina, c’è sempre un narratore in prima persona, ma adesso è un soggetto diverso, tale Victor Plavcuk, ucraino-americano, che divide la stanza con Jozef a Kiev per un breve periodo.
Poi c’è una lettera di un amico bosniaco a Jozef. Segue il capitolo più lungo per bocca di un narratore che sa tutto di Pronek, e che ogni tanto si rivolge direttamente al lettore, e quindi a questa voce è particolarmente presente, e a suo modo fuorviante.
L’ultimo capitolo poi è l’apoteosi delle domande: che roba è, che ci sta a fare, che vuole dire?


Nick Harwart: Bosnia Blues.

Nonostante ciò ho come l’impressione d’aver voglia di rincontrare questo bosniaco adottato da Chicago, che scrive in inglese inventandosi parole nuove, impregnando tutto d’umori blues in chiave bosniaca. Credo che gli darò un’altra chance.


Chicago.

[Jason · Rating 3 out of 5]

sad. if i had to review the book in a word, that'd be it. but, like the titular character, this is "complicated." the book made me sad because it's author only started writing in english in 1995 and already has a vastly, vastly better grasp and ability in the language than i do - and i've been speaking/writing it all my life. the main character, jozef pronek, is sad in so many ways: in his eastern european childhood, in the manner in which all teenagers are sad, and in how he manages to assimilate (or not) to life in america as an adult. the saddest thing about this book is that it is so clearly a thing of beauty, and i've no idea what to make of it. none whatsoever.

professional reviewers seem to fall over themselves to justly praise his lingistic mastery and unique (truly!) perspective of the world, as well as the book's meditation on identity. but where others draw comparisons to nabokov (perhaps accurately - i don't know) and laud the zen-like conclusion, i can't help but wonder what the h#ll happened. the book is divided into half a dozen sections or so, but the reader can only infrequently identify the first person narrator. for much/most of the book, i wasn't sure through whose eyes i was witnessing pronek's life, and how that figures into the dream-like, ambiguous ending. nearly every sentence amazed me, but there were a number of occasions when i asked myself, "where is this going?" i might have a better idea a few days from now, after marinating in thought for a bit, but having just finished the book last night, right now i'm still wondering what hemon was trying to tell me.

[LH · Rating 5 out of 5]

'Nowhere Man' is one of the very best English language books of the decade. It is a triumph of innovative and meaningful story-telling and a masterpiece of word-craft. Aleksandar Hemon is perhaps the first and only writer able to absorb a strong affinity with Nabokov without being drowned like Narcissus in the beauty of his own writing. Yes, Hemon writes beautifully, which means that he constantly surprises, delights, and disorients the reader, makes the reader marvel and look with fresh eyes on the world. But he also has an urgent story to tell, albeit in his own fiercely original way.

The protagonist of 'Nowhere Man' is Jozef Pronek, a bright, lonely, war-scarred and cynically nostalgic refugee from the 1990's Balkan War who has come to live in Chicago. Pronek is the center and crux of the novel, but his story is delivered from points outside of center, via shifting and vaguely ghostly views of his life. The roaming narration brings certain works of David Mitchell to mind, (it took me a few dozen pages to realize that Pronek and the first narrator were not one in the same... but then after digesting the book's finale, it seems that perhaps they are) and yet the point-of-view never strays far from the intense unfolding of Pronek's young life-- his raging hormones, two-bit rock bands, hilarious adolescent embarassments, and the strange but powerful impression he makes on others as he grows into an adult and moves to the USA. In a certain sense his life will be perfectly and uncannily recognizable to the vast majority of readers, but then it will also be beyond the immediate experience of that same group. Most of "us" have not lived through war and left family and best friends behind. Still, Pronek is never defined by his experience of the Balkan conflict (rendered in horrific three-dimensions in certain passages) he is just himself, warm and witty and-- especially at the end-- far from perfect.

There is no plot to "Nowhere Man." Clearly some readers will be soured by Hemon's thorough disinterest in straightfoward storyline. There is just one life to relate. Hemon's absolutely original creation (aligned with but never subservient to V.N., Below, Kundera, Fitzgerald, Murakami, and John Kennedy Toole) delivers that life as a thrilling work of art.

[Moeen · Rating 3 out of 5]

همن نویسنده‌ی محبوب من بین نویسنده‌های زنده‌س. طنز و خونسردی توأم بالکانیش، شخصیت‌های بی‌درکجای گیج/کمیک/غم‌انگیز، بازیگوشی‌ها و فرم‌های ادبیِ راهگشا و چالش‌برانگیز، وسعت تاریخی/جغرافیایی‌دادن به تجربه‌ی شخصیش، و شاید از همه مهم‌تر تواناییش تو نوشتنِ صحنه‌ها، جزئیات و جمله‌هایی که آدم رو غافل‌گیر و هیجان‌زده می‌کنن. همه‌ی اینا باعث شده‌ن که با وجود این‌که مدام داره از یه سری تِم می‌نویسه، همیشه با علاقه می‌رم طرفش. «مردی از ناکجا» اولین رمانش و دومین کتابشه و از نظر فرمی (و مضمونی) خیلی یادآورِ کتاب محبوبش، یعنی «پنین» نابوکوفه: مثل پنین این‌جا هم با داستان‌هایی از بخش‌های مختلف زندگی شخصیت اصلی (ژوزف پرونک، که در ضمن مثل پروفسور پنین به آمریکا مهاجرت کرده) طرفیم که پیوستگیِ رمان کلاسیک رو ندارن، روایت‌های به‌ظاهر سوم‌شخصی که راوی‌های شناس و ناشناسی از زندگی پرونک تعریف می‌کنن. پرونک هم مثل پنین و یه حال «نووِرمن»ی داره. وقتی به شخصیت‌های همن فکر می‌کنم این تصویر تو ذهنم می‌آد: یه آدم خجالتی که وسط خیابون یا هر جای شلوغ دیگه‌ای شق کرده و نمی‌دونه چی کار کنه

من بقیه‌ی کتاب‌های همن رو به انگلیسی خونده بودم و این یه دونه رو نگه داشته بودم تا ترجمه‌ش بیاد (آپدیت: نشر افق، نشر چشمه هم تازه زده که اونو نخونده‌م) ترجمه‌ش به نظرم خوب نیست، فارسیش خوبه ولی از همُن دوره. تو ریویوهایی که توی مجلات یا همین گودریدز نوشته‌ن می‌بینید که همه دارن به انگلیسی غنی و تا حدی نامتعارف همن اشاره می‌کنن (که از این می‌آد که خودش بوسنیاییه و انگلیسی‌زبان نبوده و بعد مهاجرتش شروع کرده به انگلیسی نوشتن، خودش یه جا گفته بود انگلیسی رو با خوندن نابوکوف یاد گرفته). فارسی این کتاب این غرابت و غنی‌بودن زبانی رو نداره، گرم‌ و نرم‌تره و به زبان محاوره نزدیک‌تر، حیف

[Alta · Rating 5 out of 5]

Nowhere Man is published as a novel, yet the seven stories comprising it do not necessarily create the coherent whole we have grown accustomed to call “a novel.” But the book’s epigraph, a quote from The Age of Genius by Bruno Schulz, might give us a clue to the novel’s structure and inner logic, that is, to the author’s vision of space and time. If narratives are by their nature built upon the continuity and successiveness of events, what happens, Schulz asks, “with events that have no place of their own in time; events that have occurred too late, after the whole of time has been distributed, decided and allotted; events that have been left in the cold, unregistered, hanging in the air, errant and homeless?”

“Passover,” the first story in the novel, takes place in Chicago on April 18, 1994; “Yesterday” happens in Sarajevo between September 10, 1967, and January 24, 1992, and it describes Pronek’s life in his home country from birth up to the last day before his departure to the States. As in the presumably mythicized version of Aleksandar Hemon’s autobiography in “Exchange of Pleasant Words” from The Question of Bruno, Pronek’s family is Bosnian Ukrainian. When he goes for the first time to Ukraine, he meets a woman “he would one day visit in Chicago”—a visit described in “Blind Josef and Dead Souls” where we find out that he arrives in the States on January 26, 1992 (The Question of Bruno).

The coherence between, and precise matching of the important dates in the characters’ lives is uncanny given the fact that we are dealing here with two different books. Is it possible that the arrangement of the stories in these two books was done by Hemon in a different way than what his editors ultimately decided, and “Blind Josef Pronek” was initially part of “The Pronek Fantasies”? Or is this shuffling of stories deliberate—as the quote from Schulz suggests? If the latter is true, the mastery of such complex structures as that of Hemon’s books is extraordinary. The technique in which a story from one book complements another book’s events and characters, thus giving the illusion of a three-dimensional reality, was invented by Balzac in the Comédie Humaine in the desire to compete with reality itself and to create a self-sufficient fictional universe. Hemon has more modest and more modern aspirations, as his desire for the whole is paralleled by a desire for the interrupted and the fragmented. His Sebald-like technique of mixing artifacts (photos, some of which are of “real” people) with the fabric of the story has the effect of blurring the line between the real and the fictional, and the fiction acquires what Roland Barthes called “the effect of the real” (i.e., a lifelike feeling).

“Fatherland” takes us to Ukraine in 1991, where the narrator, an American of Ukrainian origin meets Pronek, a Bosnian also of Ukrainian origin. “Translated by Josef Pronek” takes place in Sarajevo in December 1995—a sober and minimalist rendering of war violence, sparing us the exotic spice some authors feel obligated to add when writing about wars. The last piece, “Nowhere Man,” a hilarious parody of spy stories, spans over a hundred years, from 1900 in Kiev to 2000 in Shanghai. Here, Pronek appears episodically as one of the names of the Spy known as Captain Pick. “Nowhere Man,” which gives the novel its title, is emblematic of the structure of the entire book. This is not a return to Pronek’s roots, since the Pronek in this story was born in September 1900 in Kiev, while the Pronek in “Yesterday” and presumably all the other stories was born in Sarajevo on September 10, 1967. The two Proneks are two different incarnations at different times and places of the idea of Pronek, of Pronek as a possibility. Moreover, one of the men in Pronek’s circle in Shanghai is Alex Hemon, “a former member of the Purple Gang in Detroit, a hit man who has to kill somebody every time he gets drunk.” Pronek is also the man who turns in to the police Sorge from “The Sorge Spy Ring” (The Question of Bruno). Both Hemon and Sorge are mentioned only in passing, as if they were familiar members of a family the reader is acquainted with. (Incidentally, Sorge also reappears in the last story of The Question of Bruno, “Imitation of Life.”)

It is, of course, possible that Josef Pronek from “Nowhere Man” is the father of Josef Pronek from “Yesterday” since they are both of Ukrainian origin. It is up to the reader to fill in the blanks, since the author only gives us apparently disconnected stories in which the characters cross paths and reemerge under new incarnations. What distinguishes Hemon from other writers is not that his books break with the linear structure of storytelling—there is nothing new about that, as numerous contemporary American films and novels do it; but in doing so, these movies and books tend to follow a predictable pattern: they either start with the end of the story and then go back until the last scene/page is the same as the one at the beginning; or else the story moves back and forth in time between the moment of storytelling and the past when the events occurred. Hemon, on the other hand, builds parallel universes whose characters intersect. The main character from one story makes a brief appearance in another story, thus creating a common universe stitching together the stories that exist out there as broken fragments. It is a paradoxical desire for a total world— paradoxical because Hemon has been described as a “postmodern writer,” and if “postmodern” means anything, the desire for any kind of totality is its very opposite.

Since any creation is ultimately about recreating space and time, a writer’s essence resides in his vision of space and time. From this point of view, Hemon realizes the incredible performance of reconciling Balzac and Schulz. In this, he is entirely postmodern, a writer of multiple origins, a “nowhere man” who may be one of the world’s greatest writers.

[Tahmineh Baradaran · Rating 3 out of 5]

.
مردی جوان که سری در شیکاگو و سابقه ای دربوسنی و کیِف دارد. جنگهای داخلی یوگسلاوی ، تفاوتهای عمیق فرهنگی ، سختیهای مهاجرت
فاصله بسیار امیدها وآرزوها با آنچه درپیش رو داریم..

[Karen · Rating 4 out of 5]

Yes, I liked this book, but the real reason I'm giving it high marks is that it confirmed my suspicion (based on various short stories of Hemon's that I've come across) that Aleksandar Hemon is a Real Neat Guy and made me want to read his other stuff, which, I suspect, will be better than this book. Hemon emigrated from Bosnia to Chicago at age 28, and I have a feeling that he wrote the vignettes (or short stories, or whatever) in this book before he fully mastered the English language... his skills are definitely impressive, but it seemed to me that some of his strange word choices might not have been deliberate. Also, the last chapter kind of gives you a hint of what Hemon is capable of when he drops the immigrant-from-Bosnia fictionalized memoir angle and starts to make shit up, and I'm really excited to see more of that. But even if this is as good as it gets, I like.

(But PS, critics everywhere - just because someone uses phrases like "cup of limpid tea", it does not mean they write just like Nabokov!)

[Iman Narimani · Rating 2 out of 5]

معمولا کتاب هایی را که میخوانم بر اساس پیشنهاد دیگران انتخاب می کنم اما این کتاب را هدیه گرفتم و دوستی که آن را هدیه داد پیشنهاد کرد که گاهی بدون تحقیق کتاب بخوانم و کتاب هایی را امتحان کنم که کمتر کسی آنها را خوانده و کمتر معروف شده اند.
وقتی امتیاز کتاب را اینجا دیدم فکر کردم حتما باید کتاب خوبی باشد.
کتاب جذاب است آنقدر که شمارا تا صفحه های آخر با خودش همراه می کند اما واقعا محتوای خاصی ندارد. شاید برای کسانی که به یوگوسلاوی و شوروی سابق، فروپاشی آن و جنگ بوسنی علاقه دارند جذاب باشد اما برای من جذابیتی نداشت. همچنین روایت ها توسط سوم شخص بود که باز هم مورد علاقه من نیست. با این حال نویسنده خیلی خوب فضاسازی کرده بود و انصافا قلم خوبی داشت. ترجمه هم بسیار روان و خوب بود. هرچند در مورد ترجمه نمی شود قضاوتی داشت اما امتیاز بالای مخاطبان خارجی به این کتاب و امتیاز پایین مخاطبان ایرانی شاید به علت خوب نبودن ترجمه در انتقال حس متن به مخاطب باشد.
کل داستان کتاب زندگی شخصی به نام یوزف پرونک است که توسط چند راوی مختلف -که در دوره‌هایی از زندگی‌اش پرونک با آن‌ها آشنا می‌شود- روایت می شود.

[Negar Khalili · Rating 4 out of 5]

پشت جلد کتاب به نقل از نیویورک‌تایمز نوشته: همن نمی‌تونه حتی یک جمله‌ی حوصله‌سربر بنویسه. واقعا هم همین‌طور بود. می‌شد کتاب رو دست گرفت و بدون لحظه‌ای ملالت یه نفس خوندش. البته این خودش به خودی خود از یه رمان کار خوب در نمیاره و رمان‌های حوصله‌سربر خوب و خفن زیادی در این جهان هستن. ولی خب این رمان این ویژگی رو داشت. علی‌رغم اینکه در باطنش پیچیدگی محتوایی و فرمی داشت، اما بسیار خوش‌خوان بود.
خطر لو رفتن داستان.
رمان در مورد مردیه به اسم یوزف پرونک. این آقا در بحبوحه‌ی جنگ بوسنی مهاجرت می‌کنه و سر از شیکاگو در میاره. ما خیلی کم از خود جنگ بوسنی در کتاب می‌خونیم. به نسبت حجمش. فقط اشاره‌هایی گذرا می‌شه و تنها جایی که مفصل درباره‌ش می‌گه در خلال نامه‌ایه که دوست پرونک، میرزا، براش نوشته. همین برای من خیلی جالب بود. انگار که نویسنده پشت هم نمی‌گه جنگ جنگ جنگ، اما جنگ در این کتاب جاریه. نه فقط جنگ بوسنی. جنگ. اشاره به جنگ‌های دیگه در جهان هم زیاده توش. جنگ کنار قهرمان نیست. اما هست و قهرمان عملا جنگ‌زده به حساب میاد.
قهرمانی که قبل از مهاجرت و بعد از مهاجرتش انگار دوتا آدم مختلفه و انگار بعد از مهاجرتش چیزی از خودش جدا می‌افته. مثلا یه جا راوی می‌گه پرونک سوار هواپیما بود و داشت می‌رفت. داشت پایین رو نگاه می‌کرد و من این پایین بودم. ما نمی‌فهمیم این «من» دقیقا کیه. انگار که هویت پرونکه و ازش جدا افتاده.
ما زندگی پرونک رو از روایت‌های بی‌حساب‌و‌کتاب آدم‌های مختلف و راوی‌ عجیبی که نمی‌شناسیمش می‌شنویم.
و در پایان رمان هم روایتی از مردی می‌شنویم که به‌ظاهر ربطی به پرونک قصه نداره اما داره و بسیار جالبه.
من به طور کلی از رمان‌هایی که از روزگار و سیاست جدا نمی‌افتن خوشم میاد. این رمان خیلی این ویژگی رو داره. دوران تیتو، تجزیه‌ی یوگوسلاوی، تجزیه‌ی شوروی، جنگ بوسنی و خیلی چیزها از این دست. دلم می‌خواست بوسنیایی بودم و این کتاب رو می‌خوندم. مسلما درک و دریافت من رو زیادتر می‌کرد. اما خب رمان کارش همینه دیگه. آدم رو می‌بره جایی که احتمالاً‌خودش هرگز نمی‌تونه باشه و تجربه کنه، و خب ما هم به عنوان خاورمیانه‌ای‌های جنگ و انقلاب و بحران و دیاسپورا دیده انقدرا هم گیج نیستیم در درک رنج مستتر در کتاب.
چیز دیگه‌ای که برام جالب بود و خودم هم بهش خیلی فکر کرده بودم، ارتباط بین هویت، زبان و وطنه. در این داستان اتفاقا خیلی بولد به چشمم اومد. پرونک نمی‌تونه درست و صحیح انگلیسی حرف بزنه و احساساتش رو نمی‌تونه خوب بیان کنه. دقیقا از همون وقت که از زبان مادریش جدا می‌افته گسستش از خودش شروع می‌شه.
تجربه‌ی خوبی بود خوندنش. خصوصا که بعد از جنگ دوازده‌روزه گوشم به واژه‌ی جنگ تیزتر شده و متاسفانه انگار نهاد بشر از جنگ جدا نمی‌افته و همواره جنگی یا جنگ‌هایی هستن. جنگ به سرنوشت بشر وصله. رنجش هم وصله.
بجز این‌ها ترجمه هم واقعا خوب بود. لحن و واژگان هم‌سو با کار انتخاب شده بودن و جمله‌ها، حتی جمله‌های پیچیده، تمیز بودن. الحق هم خوب از تیغ سانسور در رفته بود ترک تتاری.

[George · Rating 3 out of 5]

3.5 stars. An interesting, originally written, clever, sad, quirky, sometimes amusing novel about the life of Jozef Pronek, a nowhere man, (an immigrant), who has difficulties being fully understood. The author writes many sentences that an English speaker wouldn’t write, yet the sentences work, providing a new way of viewing written communication.

The novel is in six interlinked parts. We gain an understanding of Pronek from different time periods, mainly from 1967 to 2000, when he was a soldier, a student, looking for work, living cheaply and being in relationships.

Here are some examples of the author’s writing style that I have randomly copied from the book:
‘As Marcus was speaking, the people in the class tightened, as if the classroom had contracted....’
‘The raindrops began crawling down the pane’.
‘The people around me shuffled their feet as if rattling their shackles.’
‘Owen lit another cigarette, snapped his Zippo shut, and inhaled solemnly, as if inhaling a thought.’

A thought provoking, worthwhile read.

[George Ilsley · Rating 5 out of 5]

This is a book which completely blew me away.

I've read it a couple of times and will keep reading it.

Astonishing use of language.

[Justin · Rating 4 out of 5]

Hemon is one of those crazy brilliant types who drives me nuts because I know no matter how hard I try, I will never be as brilliant myself—or brilliant at all, for that matter. A former Bosnian now living in Chicago, he learned English maybe 15 years ago, started writing in English, and oh, about three-four years later started seeing his stories in periodicals like the Paris Review.

Naturally, he gets a lot of comparisons to Nabokov, a similar crazy genius able to write beautifully in multiple languages. I embarrassingly have yet to read Nabokov, but I've now read Hemon, and I imagine the same thing blows me away about him that would blow me away about Nabokov: It's not just that Hemon clearly has a larger vocabulary than my 30 years of speaking and listening to English has afforded, and it's not just that his weirdly, fascinatingly disjointed narrative about a semi-autobiographical protagonist Jozef Prenek is gripping and moving. No, what I can't get over is how (and I'm told Nabokov achieves a similar feat) precisely articulated Hemon's style is, how he has taken this language not innate in him and made it entirely his own—a feat most writers never achieve no matter what English they're writing in.

Hemon writes sentences that, if you are an aspiring writer, will make you scratch your head and think to yourself, "how the hell did he DO that?" And if you are just a casual reader (bless you), his sentences will simply fill you with joy and remind you afresh of language's power to thrill and delight. Even if you aren't interested in a story that randomly criss-crosses through time, building a strange, meandering portrait of a gentle Bosnian who flees his native land before a terrible war breaks out, Hemon's books are worth reading just to delight like a foodie devouring a tasty bon-bon over morsels like the following:

"I thought that if another revolution were ever to break out in the USSR, it would start on a train or some other public transportation vehicle—the spark would come from two sweaty asses rubbing."

And, when young Jozef's grandmother dies while tucking him in at night:

"Everything in the room was perfectly still, as if it all went away with Grandma and only left its shapes behind."

Having typed them, I'm not sure those sentences are the best examples to illustrate my point, but I already returned the book to the library and don't have the means to dig out more. I hope you'll take my word for it, though, and read this.

[Jessica Haider · Rating 3 out of 5]

3.5 stars

Jozef Pronek is our Nowhere Man. He grew up in Bosnia and was a typically angsty teenager. He was inspired to pick up guitar based on a Beatles songbook and formed a Beatles cover band with some of his friend that then morphed shortly into punk then into blues. As an adult, Pronek moves to the States where he finds work and also tries to improve his English skills. Our narrator is someone who knew Pronek overseas and then again runs into him years later in America. I don't quite understand this narrator and when he pops into first person on the rare occasion I was like "oh, he's back. hmm."

This book is highly lauded by some and has much critical acclaim. Yet, for me, it didn't quite connect. Maybe it is because I am lacking something personally (brains, maybe??) but I didn't fully "get it". I can appreciate the author's mastery of the English language, particularly since it is not his native tongue. I got this book in a book swap forever ago and I finally picked it up because it was randomly chosen for me in the 1001 TBR Takedown challenge for the month of July.

What to listen to while reading (or taking a break)
Nowhere Man by The Beatles
Yellow Submarine by The Beatles
Yesterday by The Beatles
Everybody Loves Somebody by Dean Martin
Something Stupid by Frank Sinatra
I Put a Spell on You by Screamin' Jay Hawkins
She Sells Sanctuary by The Cult
Black Star by Radiohead
Shadow of a Doubt by Sonic Youth

[l · Rating 5 out of 5]

"I kept wanting to read them the passage when Lear and Cordelia are about to go to prison, and Lear says: "Come, let's away to prison." And he tells Cordelia about all the things they can do together in prison: they will live, and pray, and sing, and tell old tales, and laugh at gilded butterflies, and hear poor rogues talk of court news, and they'll talk with them too - who loses and who wins, who's in, who's out, and take upon themselves the mystery of things, as if they were God's spies. And Cordelia says nothing beyond that point, she does not utter a word, they take them to prison and she's killed, Lear dies. I wanted to read that with them, and then sit in silence, make them imagine all the things that Cordelia might have said, think of all the things I could have said, and let the uncomplicated sorrow settle in and stay with me, like a childhood friend."

having reread: his prose is amazing.

[ReaderUSA · Rating 2 out of 5]

The hype this utterly precious, masturbatory, and forgettable book received is astonishing. Hemon checks off all the boxes for the hip, young author: Structurally unorthodox (albeit without adding depth or interest)? Check. Alluring superficial gestures at a Nabokovian/Cervantes/Auster-esque gamesmanship to lend the appearance of a greater intelligence and sophistication than that which is actually there? Check. Built-in poignancy of a presumably intriguing other-ness? Check. Stringing together of pretty yet utterly inconsequential vignettes in nouveau-Proustian fashion designed to impress at the sentence level? Check. This book brings to mind everything that's bankrupt in contemporary lit. I probably therefore hated it more than it deserves -- hence the two stars -- but nevertheless am unable to recommend it.

[Márcio · Rating 4 out of 5]

O livro se inicia com o narrador, bósnio de origem e vivendo em Chicago, a terminar suas tarefas domésticas para poder ir a uma entrevista de emprego numa escola de Inglês para estrangeiros, onde já nos deparamos com as primeiras bizarrices que encontraremos no decorrer da obra. O diretor da escola o leva para conhecer algumas das turmas e na sala com estudantes em nível avançado, ele tem a impresão de reconhecer um dos homens. E sim, reconhece-o da infância, quando viviam em Sarajevo. É Jozeph Pronek. A partir daí, somos levados a vários instantes da vida de Pronek, apresentados quase que de forma surrealista, partindo de sua infância na Bósnia ao trabalho como ativista do Greenpeace já em solo americano, passando por uma Ucrânia às portas da indepedência do poderio soviético, para não falar dos trabalhos realizados em uma agência de detetives de Chicago.

Hermon sempre me deixa feliz com sua escrita. É capaz de descrever cenas com tal precisão de detalhes, mas, longe de ser enfadonho, sabe o momento certo de dar prosseguimento à narrativa, conferindo ao seu texto a fluição necessária. Isso para não falar das imagens que projeta, parecia-me que as andanças do narrador e de Pronek pelas ruas de Chicago se assemelhavam a uma pintura de Hieronymus Bosch, ou seja, a celebração da ruína que por vezes não se distinguia das possíveis ruas de Sarajevo, destruídas pela guerra.

É um mundo de ponta-cabeça, no qual a loucura está ali ao lado, em que os limites morais e éticos que deveriam guiar o ser humano são praticamente inexistentes na selva do "salve-se quem puder", e é preciso ser forte para se manter o mais são possível.

[علی‌رضا · Rating 5 out of 5]

بیستم خرداد ۱۴۰۴ | نیمه‌شب
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خیلی کم پیش می‌آید چیزی این‌شکلی شوکه‌ام کند. نمی‌دانم باید چه بنویسم راجع به شدتِ تنهاییِ کشیده‌ی یوزف پرونک که آواره‌ی همه‌جا بود و ساکنِ هیچ‌جا!
‌
فقط می‌توانم بگویم که همه باید بخوانند. هر کسی که دستی بر آتشِ خواندن دارد. شاید اگر چیز بیش‌تری توانستم بگویم نوشته‌ام را ویرایش کنم.

پی‌نوشت: حتما با ترجمه‌ی ترک‌تتاری از نشر چشمه.

[Lamija · Rating 3 out of 5]

initially I enjoyed the story and I thought that it will be interesting,,

like okay we have the beginning in sarajevo, we have jozef moving to Chicago, then some stories from his life from another person's pov, then back to Chicago again (which made sense), but then we have a completely new story at the end from a different character (I still haven't figured out who that is) ???

i did not understand the point, i have no idea what the story is talking about and i was just left more confused by the ending ? i thought the story was going somewhere but it went a completely new direction so i didn't find the connection with the rest of the book

hence 3 stars (originally intended for 4)

[Muhamed · Rating 3 out of 5]

3.5*

[Shovelmonkey1 · Rating 3 out of 5]

Truly impressive narrative and use of language as a descriptive tool, especially since Hemon is writing in a second language (and one which he only learned three years to embarking on his first novel). Unique and initially engaging but I only really enjoyed the narrative style of the first two characters and after that I sort of felt as if the book was going nowhere, man.

[مهدی محمدی · Rating 3 out of 5]

در مجموع دوستش داشتم.
چیزی که کمی اذیت می‌کرد این بود که کتاب به‌نظرم زیادی تکنیکال می‌آمد. خیلی از جاها احساس می‌کردم بیش از آن‌که داستان از منطق خودش پیروی کند، دنباله‌رو فضاسازی‌های نویسنده است تا مضمون مورد نظرش را مدام نشان بدهد. البته من کتاب را با فواصل زیاد خواندم و شاید منفصل دیدن روایت به‌این‌خاطر باشد.

[David Raz · Rating 2 out of 5]

The quote that stuck with me from Nowhere Man by Aleksandar Hemon goes something like: "I feel like there is a hole in the world in my shape. Once I'm gone, the hole will close and there will be nothing of me." That’s how I feel about this book—other than that quote, it left no real impression.
The constant shifts between identities were confusing and more distracting than thought-provoking. There’s no real plot, just perspective. I understand that this is the nature of the book, hovering between reality and fiction, filled with autobiographical details. But it didn’t work for me.
And then there’s the fixation on sex—too much of it, and most of it just felt sad.
In the end, Nowhere Man felt more like an experiment than a story—fragmented, disorienting, and ultimately forgettable. I can see how some might appreciate its style, but for me, it didn’t resonate. ★★☆☆☆

[Kristel · Rating 3 out of 5]

Reason Read: randomized list 1001,. bookspin
This book, published 2002, named after the Beatles song "Nowhere Man". The novel centers around the character of Jozef Pronek, a Bosnian refugee. It is about his experience in the US. The novel explores themes of displacement, exile, cultural adaptation, and the search for belonging.
Displacement; Jozef is forced to leave his home and come to the US.
Cultural adaptation: Pronek's struggles to adjust to American life, from his ESL class to his various minimum-wage jobs
Identity and belonging: Pronek confronts questions of identity, both as an individual and as a member of a displaced community. He grapples with the feeling of being an outsider and the search for a new sense of belonging.
Aleksandar Hemon is a Bosnian-American author, essayist, critic, television writer, and screenwriter. Since 1992 he has lived in the United States, where he found himself as a tourist and became stranded at the outbreak of the war in Bosnia. In the U.S. he worked as a Greenpeace canvasser, sandwich assembly-line worker, bike messenger, graduate student in English literature, bookstore salesperson, and ESL teacher, so these vignettes found in the novel have autobiographical foundations.

[Hibou le Literature Supporter · Rating 4 out of 5]

One gets a feeling here that in this debut novel Hemon is just getting started creating his voice. His essay collection/memoir/character sketches The Book of My Lives remains my favorite (though I have not read his last two novels yet and need to). Nowhere Man has two modes, the foreigner in America comic mode and the weight-of-history mode. I found myself more drawn to the former but the latter is necessary medicine, or rather a comment on the idea of learning history. He generally reminds me of Bellow, which is a not bad way to begin your career.

[delila · Rating 3 out of 5]

3.5

The best way to describe this book, I think, is a discombobulated series of life stories. Just when you get invested in one character’s life, Hemon changes course abruptly and throws you into another life story. Despite the occasional confusion, there’s no denying that Hemon is a unique writer, with a touch of Slavic dark humour!

[Carl R. · Rating 3 out of 5]

Aleksandar Hemon is among the hot new talents among us, according to a few of the reviews around. He’s one of those people who drive me to paroxysms of envy because, like Conrad and Nabakov and a few others, he turns out exemplary English work even though it’s not his native language (He’s Bosnian, and now two of my last three books are set largely in Sarajevo. Not sure what that means.) How Nowhere Man made it on to me “look for this one” list, I’m not sure. I’m also not quite sure how to respond to it.
Hemon gets in some good licks, for sure: “our knees touched, and a little furry animal of troubling pleasure moved ... in my belly, but I quickly smothered it with the soft pillow of denial.” “our hapless semi-intercourse” ”Natalyka ... her hands dead in her lap like hairless bloated hamsters ... watching the Red Army choir, handsome men endowed with mandibular strength thundering a victorious song.” ”The embers of [the car’s] brake lights inhaling for the last time, fading out under the ashes of night.”
However, at the beginning I found Nowhere Man much like Dave Eggers’ You Shall Know Our Own Velocity (July 23, ’07)--all sophomoric humor and contrived hi-jinks. And since Eggers is considered another hot new authorial item, I figured I must have just found myself once again lagging behind the world’s literary curve. As the book went on, though, I began to find depth and complexity that I never saw in Velocity. What is to be done, asks Bruno Schulz in the quote which frames the work, with events that have no place of their own in time, events that have occurred too late, after the whole of time has been distributed, divided and allotted; events that have been left in the cold, unregistered, hanging in the air, errant and homeless?
An apt question, which the novel never answers--nor seeks to--but certainly explores. We move back and forth through time and geography, and among narrators, one or more of which appear to be aspects of the main character’s own self. Note that the first passage I quoted above refers to “a little furry animal,” the third to “hairless hamsters.” These small rodent images recur scrambling throughout, furtive and haunting. They lurk, apparently harmless, then emerge with sometimes cataclysmic results. Human endeavor and ambitions are, Hemon seems to suggest, vulnerable to the most inconsequential and unpredictable creatures and events. Like a mouse scurrying through the house in the middle of the night. Our love, our sexuality, our very existences are in doubt at every move, every second. And to think we have found a secure and comprehensible place in the sequence of time and events is perhaps the greatest illusion to which we can fall prey. We, like protagonist Joseph Pronek, are really nowhere. The little man below would be clapping if the first half of the book lived up to the last half. Probably my lack rather than Hemon’s, but this is, after all, my web page.

[Kathy · Rating 3 out of 5]

This book still confuses me more than four years after my initial reading of it. I cannot wrap my mind around it to my satisfaction; nor, seemingly, can others. Critics in particular seem to find this confusion as evidence of literary genius. I'm not sure I agree.
In making the novel ambiguous to the point of immense frustration and confusion, I think Hemon succeeds at imbuing the reader with the feelings of a "Nowhere Man." In a way, the experience of the reader, lost with no guidance, no conclusion in sight mirrors the helpless feelings of loss and lost-ness that the "Nowhere Man" experiences.

Most descriptions of the book focus on the plight of the central character, Jozef Pronek, as an unwilling, unplanned Bosnian refugee in Chicago; yet very little of the book even mentions this. Instead, I feel the novel is about identity and its fluidity. Much of the book is about how Jozef became Jozef; but really we know very little about him; and I think the book intimates that Jozef does not really know himself, either. This is greatly reflected in that Jozef never truly acts as narrator; rather, others narrate his life for him. Strangely, these characters who tell his life seem to know more about him than anyone ever could, even Jozef himself. These characters are omniscient about Jozef, but do not ever really reveal the truths about him, maybe they do not know.

The novel is filled to the brim with alter-egos and doppelgangers, in fact each narrator seems to embody this literary device. Each is obsessed with Jozef and telling his story. We learn almost nothing about these narrators, we only learn what they know, think, or feel about Jozef. Each character seems to identify with Jozef in some way, yet Jozef never really enters the picture, speaks for himself, or even really acknowledges the narrators. Is anything the narrators tell us true about Jozef? It almost makes the reader question whether Jozef really exists at all.

Critics have suggested that Jozef acts as an alter-ego to the author himself, which holds much mystery. The end chapter, which tells a seemingly unrelated tale of a Russian turncoat in Shanghai seems to suggest so. In this, the character weaves many alter-egos, based on fabrications. As with Jozef, all around the Russian spy seem to love him and idolize him, but his web is so complex, no one truly knows him, just as no one knows Jozef. In this way, I must wonder if Hemon crafted the Jozef mythology as a strange way of wish fulfillment, to create a true mystery man in a landscape of confusion and seeming lack of identity.

[Robert · Rating 4 out of 5]

Hemon is one of those writers coming out of another language who finds a singular way of expressing himself in English. This first novel is filled with beautiful and whimsical turns of phrase. Like Hemon's short story collection, "The Question of Bruno," this novel vividly describes Chicago – the Chicago that I know – in a way that few other books have. I also enjoyed the rock-music references (the Beatles cover band in Sarajevo, the Sonic Youth-loving Greenpeace volunteer who calls herself Evol). Hemon plays tricks with the narrative point of view, telling the story of his protagonist Jozef Pronek through the voices of several other characters who encounter him at various stages of his life. This reminded me a lot of what Nabokov does with the narrators in "Pnin" and "Pale Fire." Taken at face value, it's clear that Hemon's narrators cannot know as much about Pronek as they claim. Is Pronek himself telling the story and trying to obscure that fact by adapting these other voices? The identity of at least one ghost-like narrator is a mystery. Beyond the literary device, the book is a compelling character portrait. I won't give away the end, but I will say that the final section is somewhat baffling – not necessarily in a bad way. I'm not clear on exactly what it means, and it includes some interesting references to Hemon's previous book. The final chapter makes "Nowhere Man" even more of an enigma, though it's the sort of enigma I enjoy puzzling over.

[Kirstie · Rating 4 out of 5]

I finished this over a week ago but hadn't had a chance to write about it.I probably should have read Hemon's Question of Bruno first but I found this one at City Books and not the other. Well, basically, his book could have been five/five stars if he had just ended it earlier. It seems strange but (without giving away too much) the second to last chapter is intense, challenging, and honest. It is s confrontation which is successful in getting the characters and the reader to be really engaged in what is happening and would have made for an uneasy but still more satisfying conclusion. Instead, Hemon wraps up some of the characters in a completely different setting and time period in a way that feels disjointed and completely disconnected from anything else earlier in the book. In a way, it's probably best to just consider the last chapter to be some add on short story not in connection with the rest imo...though perhaps that is just me.

[Abigail · Rating 2 out of 5]

I felt that this book should have been fantastic, but I just didn't get it. Sometimes I was confused by which character's POV was being taken and I felt that I didn't have enough background about the characters to help me. I wonder if having read 'The Question of Bruno' first would have helped me with this. As it was I was able to appreciate the interesting language and the different approach of the author, but it didn't really work for me.