An epic read about war, love, and death. Osman and Pinto love one another at a time and in a place where such love is forbidden- and that love continues over time. The writing here is quite purple and reflects, I suspect, Hemon's passion for his story. That said, I learned a great deal and appreciated this for the very different take on war. Thanks to Netgalley for the ARC. For fans of literary fiction.

I loved this book as I read it and even more when I read the epilogue explaining how it came about. (But please don't skip ahead; read the origin of the story at the end, as the author intended.) This is the best sort of historical fiction, drawing readers into the chaotic world of beautifully drawn characters as their lives are upended by globally cataclysmic events --in this case spanning from a small shop in Sarajevo the moments before the assassination of Archduke Franz Ferdinand through through the following decades of turmoil and across the globe to Shanghai. This is a love story across boundaries of religion, social mores, nationality, generations, and even the boundary between life and death.

After reading The Lazarus Project some time ago, I was already a fan of Hemon's work. I daresay this novel is even better.

(Goodreads post below; Will post to amazon as soon as reviews are allowed.)

The World And All It Holds was a challenging read for me. It is beautifully written but emotionally draining. The love story of Pinto and Osman, two men trapped in the brutality of war, was heartwarming..However, the many horrors and cruelty of war overshadowed this and became too difficult to read. I found myself having to put the book down and come back to it. Perhaps, that was the point – how can we endure man’s inhumanity to man.

The Thank you, Netgalley, for the opportunity to read the ARC of The World And All It Holds

This one is going to stay with me for a long time. It does so much more than give American readers the opportunity to see historical events of the 20th century from a different perspective. Intellectually, I appreciate the learning moments, but the emotional and psychological depth could have only been achieved by masterful artistry. I suggest that readers lean into the challenges of a sometimes non-linear plot line and shifts among languages. The payoff is worth it.

Thank you to Aleksandar Hemon; Farrah, Strauss, and Giroux; Macmillan Audio; and NetGalley for an advance reader copy in exchange for an honest review.

Note on the audio version: the narration is effective and impactful. At times, the volume and recording quality seem to shift abruptly, perhaps indicating a space where an edit needed to be made.

This was not the right book for me so I don't want to overly disparage it (but perhaps I should disparage the publisher blurb because it led me to believe that this book was something different.) This is a war book and a forbidden love story that starts in Sarajevo in 1914 and spans several decades and two continents. There is lots of description of what is happening in the moment between the characters but very little overall context to the bigger historical picture is included. One of the reasons that I like reading historical fiction is to learn more history - this book taught me almost nothing. The author also mixes in other languages with little to no translation. This was very distracting to me - especially when it was a language that I don't know because I was trying to see if there were similarities in words with languages that I do know.

The World And All It Holds was a challenging read and difficult to review. The story of Pinto and Osman and their great love is told over time and the horrors and ugliness of war. The pain, loss, and terrifying experiences they endured took my breath away but was emotionally draining. The writing style is very descriptive, philosophical, and often laced with untranslated language, which was an obstacle that slowed the reading process. Thank you, Netgalley, for the opportunity to read the ARC of The World And All It Holds.

This book deals with many complex topics: love, war, grief and family. The love story between the two main characters was beautifully written but I found the novel to be sometimes overwritten, intense and the constant brutality very difficult to read. It wasn't quite for me.

An epic masterpiece, but not for everyone. It took me a long time to finish this book because I had to put it down for lighter material from time to time. I would read for a couple of hours at a time and at least once during each reading I would cry. The depictions of war and violence are graphic and brutal. The loss and suffering of the characters I came to care about is devastating. I found the use of multiple foreign languages without translation daunting. I was looking forward to some resolution and redemption at the end but was disappointed. Make no mistake, the writing is brilliant but it's a hard road to the bitter end.

The opening of this novel took by breath away. The author just gripped me with his writing and I could not stop reading. Hemon takes us on a trip from Sarajevo in June of 1914 to the war trenches of WWI, to Russia during the revolution and finally to Shanghai of 1932 being attacked by the Japanese and later 1937 as the city is occupied by Japan. Every perfect sentence brings surprise, delight and twists. This is a story of survival, at times violence, and above all love. Love between two men that endures the lifetime of the main character and helps him survive during the struggle times of mid 20th century. I got advance copies both in print and audio, which made the experience of reading this book wonderful. The audio narrator did a great job taking into account that there are some sentences written in languages other than English. Thank you to NetGalley, Macmillan Audio and FSG for the advance copy.

This was my first taste of Hemon's writing and now I have several others on hold at the library. One of them, The Question of Bruno appears to contain the short story which was developed into The World and All That It Holds. With a clear sense of detail and much needed humor, Aleksandar Hemon examines the overwhelming events of history and the effect they have on individual lives. Highly recommended.

Is there always an answer? Do we always know why?

Hemon shows us lot. He takes us from Sarajevo onto a war in the trenches, then as refugees in Eastern Europe and on and on to Asia and international Shanghai.

He writes a conveyor belt of dust and stones. Movement of little people, refugees ensnared by forces bigger than them and put on a carousel of movement, loss, separation, grief, pain, violence and destruction. Lives tossed all over the place. We follow them through their suffering. Not easy to get through such sad bleakness. Hemon does not give us any answers. The sadness is what I take away from this. Hard to live such a life.

An ARC kindly provided by author/publisher via Netgalley

tl;dr goodreads review: thanks for the emotional damage, I'm gonna cry now.

thanks to netgalley, the author, and the publisher for the ARC ❤️

-- some thoughts --

So, this book was hovering at a four star the entire experience. Hemon's descriptions of war and violence, of love and sex, were gorgeous, harrowing, erotic and packed with so much emotion that I couldn't even breathe in certain sections. The prose lacked clarity in certain sections when time became fluid and the prose pulled the reader back and forth through the past and the present.

And then, within the last i don't know 10-15%, I was crying. Like sobbing in my bed holding my Kindle and crying. This is the third book to make me cry and my tears bumped this book from a four to a five star. I will be looking for this book to appear on awards lists because it absolutely deserves it.

Once again, thank you FSG and Netgalley and Aleksander Hemon for gifting me this eARC in exchange for an honest review

DNF - Maybe reading this at a different point in time or, maybe, reading it via a different medium, would have seen me appreciate the story more. For now, I am jumping ship.

I came to this book totally blank. I thought I knew what it was about and was in for a huge surprise, but in a good way.
I did not expect to find such an honest and raw story. More than anything it felt very real. It is deeply sad, but hopeful at the same time. With a complexity that sometimes overwhelmed me, it was beautiful to read this author who I knew absolutely nothing about.
I had a hard time initially finding my pacing with the story, but once I did, it just flew by.
Highly recommended if you like history, with touches of emotional growth.

Thank you so much to the author, NetGalley and the publisher for an eARC in exchange for my honest review.

Aleksandar Hemon gallops right up to the line dividing "perfect" from "overwritten" but he never steps over it. Every sentence is so lush and so rich. It took some getting used to. It was like falling in love when I didn't want to but in the end I had no choice. It's rococo writing. It's full of filigrees and flourishes. I fell in love with each wavy swirling sentence--the way each sentence always manage to fit in one more perfect clause before the period came along. I read this book in electronic ARC while also listening to the audiobook. I adored the narrator of the audiobook, Aleksandar Mikic--what a talent!--but I also loved reading the words on the page at the same time, so that I had a view of the hills and valleys of the sentences as they came along. I appreciated having both audio and print versions handy, as I read, where they could reflect and refract one another in my brain. This is rich writing. It required a few channels into my thoughts and feelings for me to fully engage with it.

There are so many specific scenes that took my breath away. So many varied moods. One aspect I particularly loved in the novel were the wrenchingly beautiful lovemaking scenes between men--scenes that are full of desire, but also, great gentleness. They were a little gauzy. There was a romantic sheen on the writing that fit the story so well and made me realize how rarely I've read scenes where two men get to be gentle and romantic with one another, vs having a more visceral physical experience on the page...and I thought it was great.

This was really dense. I couldn't get more than 5% in before I had to give up.I just kept falling asleep or my mind was wandering -- I wanted to like it but it just wasn't grabbing me.

3.5-4 stars
This book took me a long time to get into. It's mostly the story of a young man who is conscripted to fight in WWI following the assassination of Archduke Franz Ferdinand. His experiences in the army, as a prisoner of war, and subsequent struggles, are made bearable only by his love for fellow-soldier Osman.

The book was hard to read because it was pretty bleak (war and its aftermath) and also due to the quite frequent use of foreign words and phrases that were not translated and were not always clear from the context. By the end, however, I was moved and glad I had read it.

Thanks to the publisher and NetGalley for a free e-ARC of this book.

This is a novel of astonishing scope and incredible intimacy, following Rafael Pinto, a young man who, witnessing the assassination of Franz Ferdinand, is unwillingly jerked into military service, where he is surrounded by death and horror and love, which almost makes the rest bearable. The reader follows Pinto from trench to prisoner camp to safe-house, all as Pinto follows and is carried by his lover Osman. Pinto and Osman and their friends and allies and daughter are very real and compelling. Rich. in its coverage of religion, class, empire, revolt, and the history of the Balkans, this is a book for lovers of history and love and the human spirit.

War is cruel. War is bloody, destructive, and devastating. War creates widows, widowers, orphans, and bereaved parents. War separates families in artificial and violent ways. War leaves scars on souls and skin, severs literal limbs and metaphorical hearts. War is hell, indeed. But war can also bring out the best in us. It can show us the value of love and care. It showcases generosity in circumstances where resources are most scarce. Love in war is never taken for granted; we know that each moment of love could be our last.

Rafo Pinto comes of age just when the First World War begins. He is at the parade in Sarajevo when Archduke Franz Ferdinand is shot. An apothecary, he is enlisted as a medic and finds himself in the trenches of that brutal conflict. But it is also there that he meets the love of his life, the handsome, charismatic Osman. When they are overrun during a battle, an odyssey begins that will take Rafo all over Europe and Asia in his quest for a place to be. He has no papers and can't find a way back home, so seeks to thrive as best he can wherever he lands. All of this is complicated by the fact that he quite inadvertently winds up with a baby on his hands. Rahela becomes his beloved daughter, accompanying him through all his trials and dangers. She comes of age in Shanghai at a time when that place, too, is plagued by violence and war. But what endures is Rafo's love for Osman. Whether hallucinating his presence next to him or feeling his touch in an opium haze, Osman is never far from his heart and his mind.

All of this adds up to what should have been a compelling read, a generous tale of love, war, terror, and death; these elements can be molded into a truly satisfying book. But here they are instead used in service of an odd emotional distancing, an arm's-length examination of some oddball characters and their antics. It does not help matters any that there is a certain relentlessness to the struggles the characters endure; it begins to feel rather more allegorical than human. This is an odd outcome; the people here are wonderfully drawn and compelling, the circumstances of the plot offer themselves up for engagement, yet there is a coldness to Hemon's writing that leaves us at a remove from the story. I have to believe this is intentional; he has a long history of writing novels that draw his readers in. While it is praiseworthy to portray how very painful and disorienting war and conflict can be (not to mention homophobia), because we are not allowed to love these characters, the impact of that portrayal is muted. Which is a shame, because the story of Rafo is so very lovely in a thoroughly brutal way.

what a lovely, strange little book. i’m kind of upset, because i fully expected this to become an all-time favourite, but the second half ended up falling somewhat short to my expectations — it sort of became too much, with too many new characters being introduced and rahela and pinto’s storyline becoming somewhat clichéed. but i really did enjoy it, especially the first part — aleksandar hemon has a true gift for depicting intimacy, and i loved loved loved the way he crafted pinto and osman’s relationship in the trenches. there were some truly lovely passages in it, and i particularly loved this one:

“In those capacious, flushed cheeks, in the mirth that sparkled incessantly in his eyes, in the smirk that slanted his mouth barely noticeably so that he always seemed on the verge of kidding, Pinto could see the only way in which his life could contain any joy. He clutched the hem of Osman’s collar and pulled him in for a kiss. Their mouths were dry; it felt like licking inside of a tin cup. But if he could have ever married Osman, Pinto would tell Rahela many years later, that kiss would’ve been the crushed glass.”