This biography/autobiography is divided into two halves. The first is the story of Hemon’s parents and their forced flight from Sarajevo to Canada in the 1990s due to the Bosnian War. It’s an affectionate, insightful and loving account of them, and their bravery and resourcefulness in adapting to a new life in a new country is vividly depicted. The second half of the book is a rather rambling memoir of Hemon’s own childhood and youth in Sarajevo, and an exploration of the nature of memory and remembering. I didn’t find this part as engaging, and felt it was too disjointed and impressionistic. Overall, however, the book as a whole is enjoyable and interesting, and I gained from it an added insight into what life was life in Yugoslavia before everything fell to pieces.

This memoir is written in two volumes under a single cover. Together the pair answers the question: Where do you come from? In My Parents: An Introduction, we meet Hemon’s Ukranian father and Bosnian mother and learn about their personalities, lives and culture meeting and living in the former Yugoslavia until the Bosnian war forces the family to flee to Canada in 1992. Here Hemon repeats well worn stories and establishes his background in a tone in keeping with an Eastern European fairytale. This Does Not Belong To You further fleshes out the picture of Hemon himself through memory snippets from his childhood and early adolescence. A series of scattered pictures of small events from his youth, but expanded as his adult understanding puts meaning on a previous (mis)understanding. These small memories are poetic and poignant. They often have the feel of Blake’s Songs of Innocence and Songs of Experience meeting on the page. Together, these complementary volumes paint a memory-based picture of Hemon as he sees himself.