The Lazarus Project begins by describing a murder in 1908, when a young Jewish immigrant named Lazarus Averbuch was killed by the Chicago chief of police. Time Magazine describes this book as a "sort-of-fictional sort-of-biography", and Aleksandar Hemon was a finalist for the National Book Award for writing it.
Rather than explain what actually happened following the murder, or tell the story about what led up to the murder, instead the book involves a modern day Chicagoan via Eastern Europe named Vladimir Brik, who obsesses about the Averbuch murder and strives to write a book about it, ostensibly "the Lazarus Project." The modern day story of Brik's travels re-tracing Averbuch's roots is not so much interspersed with glimpses of Averbuch's history as it is actually spliced together with it, co-mingling characters and settings into a chaotic indecipherable literary goop.
Hemon is so wildly popular I think I bought two of his titles together, but I won't try reading the other one until after I learn more about post-modern Eastern European political history, or find a book club to read it with, because this one went so way over my head it was a waste of my time.
Rather than explain what actually happened following the murder, or tell the story about what led up to the murder, instead the book involves a modern day Chicagoan via Eastern Europe named Vladimir Brik, who obsesses about the Averbuch murder and strives to write a book about it, ostensibly "the Lazarus Project." The modern day story of Brik's travels re-tracing Averbuch's roots is not so much interspersed with glimpses of Averbuch's history as it is actually spliced together with it, co-mingling characters and settings into a chaotic indecipherable literary goop.
Hemon is so wildly popular I think I bought two of his titles together, but I won't try reading the other one until after I learn more about post-modern Eastern European political history, or find a book club to read it with, because this one went so way over my head it was a waste of my time.
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