Growing up I never understood why my grandmother who lived through WW2 avoided watching war movies at all costs. Then I got to experience war firsthand and I understood. I tend to avoid war themed books but this is Aleksandar Hemon, one of my favorite authors so I braced myself and dove right in. This book wrecked me, broke me and built me up again and it took me days to work my way through all the emotions it left me sitting with. The World and All That It Holds is a love story, a war story, poetry in motion but most of all it is a deeply emotional literary journey of characters I will never forget.

The assassination of Archduke Franz Ferdinand in Sarajevo changed the course of history and started WW1. It also leads Rafael Pinto away from the comfort of running his family's apothecary into the trenches of Galicia. The horrors of war are softened only because of the stolen moments of tenderness and affection with Osman, another Bosnian soldier. Stories and memories of home, folklore and sevdah (traditional Bosnian music), the worst and the best of humanity, and an unexpected love story of a Bosnian Jew and a Bosnian Muslim, all of it combined felt like a symphony of emotions in a literary form.

I cried so much reading this story. There was so much love, tenderness but also so much pain in these pages. Hemon is a master storyteller who is not afraid to play with language(s) and every once in a while I would have to pause and marvel at this author's brilliance. And reach for my box of tissues. This book is complex, beautifully written AND demanding. And as icing on the cake, Aleksandar Hemon collaborated with an incredibly talented Bosnian musician whose work I absolutely love - Damir Imamovic, who will be releasing an album to accompany this novel. I will be recommending this book to all of my fellow literary fiction lovers - it really is that good.

A huge thank you to Netgalley, Penguin Random House Canada & Farrar, Straus and Giroux for gifting me an ARC of this book in exchange for an honest review!