The World and All That It Holds

Description

From literary powerhouse Aleksandar Hemon, author of The Lazarus Project, comes a big, brilliant, sweeping novel of love, memory, and history-in-the-making.

As the Archduke Franz Ferdinand arrives in Sarajevo on a sunny June day in 1914, Rafael Pinto is busy crushing herbs and grinding tablets behind the counter at the pharmacy he inherited from his estimable father. It’s not quite the life he had expected during his poetry -filled student days in sophisticated, libertine Vienna—but it’s nothing a dash of laudanum from the high shelf, a summer stroll, and idle fantasies about passersby can’t help.

And then the world explodes. War devours all that they have known, and the only thing Pinto has to live for are the attentions and affection of Osman, a fellow soldier, a man of action to complement Pinto’s introspective, poetic soul; a dapper, charismatic storyteller; Pinto’s protector and his lover.

Together, Pinto and Osman will escape the trenches, survive near-certain death and imprisonment, tangle with spies and Bolsheviks. Over mountains and across deserts, from one world to another, it is Pinto’s love for Osman—with the occasional opiatic interlude—that keeps him going.

The World and All That It Holds—in all its hilarious, heartbreaking, erotic, whimsical, philosophical glory—showcases Hemon’s celebrated talent at its pinnacle and cements him as one of the boldest voices of our time.Praise for The World and All That It Holds:

“Aleksandar Hemon’s The World and All That It Holds is one of the finest novels I’ve ever read, and like all great stories, it refuses to be pigeonholed. It’s a road novel, an immigrant tale, a ghost story, a family portrait, a mystery, a historical epic, a war novel, and yes, a love story―it is all that and more, a feat ofunfettered literary bravura. In short, a masterpiece.”
―Rabih Alameddine, author of The Wrong End of the Telescope

“Hemonites rejoice! The master is back and he has forged a remarkable tale of love and war alongside his own 20th Century Silk Road. From Sarajevo to Shanghai, every sentence, every paragraph is a sensuous and often hilarious delight. Not a Hemonite yet? I envy you your very first encounter with one of the world’s greatest writers.”
―Gary Shteyngart, author of Our Country Friends

“The World and All That It Holds is a twisting, turning epic rooted in love in all its forms; an odyssey of statelessness; a haunted museum of history ranging from Sarajevo to Shanghai and Jerusalem; and an apothecary of wit, folklore and unexpectable sentences. This life-stuffed novel is Aleksandar Hemon’s masterpiece.”
―David Mitchell, author of Cloud Atlas

“The World and All that It Holds is an explosive novel. Bursting with energy, wits, and insights, it’s an epic meditation on history, philosophy, and human conditions. Aleksandar Hemon once again proves him to be one of our most innovative and invigorating novelists.”
―Yiyun Li, author of The Book of GooseALEKSANDAR HEMON is the author of The Lazarus Project, which was a finalist for the 2008 National Book Award and the National Book Critics Circle Award and a New York Times bestseller, along with three books of short stories—The Question of Bruno; Nowhere Man, which was also a finalist for the National Book Critics Circle Award; and Love and Obstacles, and the novel The Making of Zombie Wars. He has also written two volumes of essays, The Book of My Lives and My Parents/This Does Not Belong to You. Among other accolades, he has received a “genius” grant from the MacArthur Foundation, a Guggenheim Fellowship, the PEN/W.G. Sebald Award for a Writer in Mid-Career, and the 2020 John Dos Passos Prize. He cowrote the script for The Matrix Resurrections and produces music as Cielo Hemon. He teaches at Princeton University.US