Aleksandar Hemon
Aleksandar Hemon
Aleksandar Hemonis a Bosnian-born American fiction writer, essayist, and critic. His best known novels are Nowhere Manand The Lazarus Project...
NationalityBosniak
ProfessionNovelist
Date of Birth9 September 1964
book mean writing
I want a book to contain a world - indeed the world. Writing is my main means of engagement with the world and I want the scars of that engagement to be left in the language.
mean responsibility outsiders
Outsider means "I will accept the possibility that I don't have responsibility for what is happening inside my domain."
character mean thinking
There's something in psychology called the narrative paradigm, which essentially means that we think of our lives as stories in which we are the main characters.
mean writing want
I am a writer, which means I write stories, I write novels, and I would write poetry if I knew how to. I don't want to limit myself.
war mean swings
When I found myself in the U.S., and the war was at full swing in Bosnia, I read for survival - it was a means of thought resuscitation.
full means swing war
When I found myself in the U.S., and the war was at full swing in Bosnia, I read for survival - it was a means of thought resuscitation.
cords happens knows vocal
When we're upset, our vocal cords tighten and we can't speak. And when I lie - well, I can't lie, because the same thing happens - everyone who knows me knows that when I start squeaking, I've started lying.
calling continuity separates time trouble
The trouble with calling a book a novel, well, it's not like I'm writing the same book all the time, but there is a continuity of my interests, so when I start writing a book, if I call it 'a novel,' it separates it from other books.
ask certainly confess confessing life pieces secrets wrote
I really don't feel that any of the pieces I wrote were confessions; there are no revelations about secrets in my life, and actually I have nothing to confess and I certainly do not ask for redemption and there is no reward for confessing that I expect.
best praise time worst
You are always working on your worst book and your best book at the same time. The praise does not make you write better, and it shouldn't make you write worse, either.
book solidarity reader
Whatever solidarity I have established with other writers individually, it is usually organized around books. We connected as readers, as it were, not writers.
political demand moral
What you demand from storytelling is a moral - even political - import. I tend to shun that didactic aspect.
book ideas space
I like the idea of a book being a democratic space which readers enter, carrying their own thoughts, and participate in a conversation, or experience of grace.
book important may
To me, the solidarity of readers is far more important than the solidarity of writers, particularly since readers in fact find ways to connect over a book or books, whatever they may be.