The World and All That It Holds
By Aleksandar Hemon

This is a very complex book: it is at once a love story between two men, Pinto and Osman; a war story of World War I and beyond; a story of the plight of refugees; a story of family and religion.

Beginning with a firsthand account of the assassination of the Archduke and his wife in Sarajavo, the story takes the reader through many graphic – and often gory – scenes of hardship and suffering. Pinto does a lot of philosophizing about man and God, the nature of their relationship, why the god of his fathers (he is a Jew) is cruel and capricious – or if he even exists.

The writing here is very well done. For me, the main drawback to this book was the multitude of phrases and words in different languages – Bosnian, German, bastardized Spanish, and others – which were not translated and could not always be guessed at via context. I found this distracting.

The book as a whole was a hard go, so be prepared to make a concerted effort to get through it. Only the reader can decide if it is worth the

A story that is impossible to define in any one word, or even a sentence. It is a story that I will possibly never understand completely, but will continue to feel deeply the suffering, the pain, the haunting memories, the devastation and destruction of the people whose lives fill these pages, along with the unbearably haunting love felt by those who inhabit these pages, as well. It will, however, not be a story for everyone.

I struggled along with these people as they wandered through the twists and turns their lives take, felt their pain, their rage at the injustice of it all, and ultimately, for some, their fall into despair followed by addictions, and ultimately worse.

This is not an easy read, it is dark and filled with suffering, but there is also love. Love that is often unbreakable, despite the distance created by loss. Love that is painful, love that is cruel. Love that connects the distance between this world and the next. Love between a man who becomes the father of a daughter through loss, and a daughter who only recognizes this man who raised her as her father.

So many lives lived by these people, not in the sense of reincarnation, but by the upending of their lives over and over and over again. Sarajevo. Jerusalmen. Shanghai. America. A lifelong quest for a place to call home. A place where safety, security, a sense of being accepted, welcomed as a person rather than an unwelcome presence. A place to, finally, call home and, ultimately, to find a place to call home. A dream, really, that we all have but not all manage to fulfill.

It is a story of life - the good, the bad and the ugly, a story of family and those families who are created through bonds more than blood, a story that will haunt you in the best and most heartbreaking ways. It is dark and bloody at times, but there is also much love in these pages. There is no ‘one’ category that this story fits into, because that is the way life is. It is all of that and more.


Pub Date: 24 Jan 2023

Many thanks for the ARC provided by Farrar, Straus and Giroux, MCD