Semezdin Mehmedinović
Auteur de Sarajevo Blues
A propos de l'auteur
Œuvres de Semezdin Mehmedinović
Oeuvres associées
Étiqueté
Partage des connaissances
- Nom canonique
- Mehmedinović, Semezdin
- Date de naissance
- 1960
- Sexe
- male
- Nationalité
- Bosnia
Membres
Critiques
Listes
History (1)
Prix et récompenses
Vous aimerez peut-être aussi
Auteurs associés
Statistiques
- Œuvres
- 11
- Aussi par
- 3
- Membres
- 174
- Popularité
- #123,126
- Évaluation
- 3.9
- Critiques
- 3
- ISBN
- 24
- Langues
- 8
The novel is built from 3 stories: 'Me'med', "Red Bandana" and "Snowflake". They read like episodes in the life of the same people so they kind of form a novel but each of them also reads independent enough to function as a story.
The story opens on 2 November 2010 when the narrator suffers from a heart attack at the age of 50. While waiting for the ambulance and then being transported to the hospital and then into recovery and back home, he muses about life, memories and his experiences. The family fled Bosnia during the war and through all 3 parts of the novel, the current actions are interspersed with memories of Bosnia before and during the war, memories of life as new immigrants and all kinds of musings about art (mainly Bosnian), life and the universe.
The second part of the novel skips 5 years ahead to April 2015 and gets Semezdin back to Phoenix (the first place the family lived in the States in) to meet his son Harun, a photographer, for a trip through the desert so that Harun can do some work. The story of the past continues but the musings about life are replaced with musings about fathers, sons and families.
A year later, the third story picks up when just as with the first part, the family is in distress. But this time it is Sanja, the wife who helped him survive the heart attack. And unlike that first attack which got his heart, the stroke she suffers seems to slowly steal her memories. So the narrator ties together all the stories he had been telling us, all the memories and thinks about memories and life and what is really important in life.
It is a heart-felt novel which matches pretty closely the author's life. Some parts are very hard to read - the Bosnian part of the story can be hard to understand and accept - humanity is just messed up.
These days the author lives in Sarajevo again - and during all the years of his exile, he never stopped writing in Bosnian. He explains that in the novel as well - while talking about memories, language and life.
The novel can sound a bit unorganized and almost scattered but at the end what emerges is the story of a life - marked by tragedies but held together by love, nostalgia and family.
Recommended.… (plus d'informations)