Love and Obstacles is an electrifying new collection of linked short stories from the brilliant Aleksandar Hemon. On this website you'll be able to find out a little more about the book as well as the events and press surrounding it. There is also the chance to read some bookmark reviews, and to request a proof so that you can submit one of your own.

Aleksandar Hemon

Aleksandar Hemon was born in Sarajevo, Bosnia-Herzegovina, where he lived reasonably successfully until he ended up in Chicago in 1992. He loved the damned city of Sarajevo and still does, which in no way precludes his love of Chicago. Upon his arrival in the US of A, he had all kinds of lousy jobs, including, but not limited to, canvassing for Greenpeace and teaching English as a Second Language to the people who suddenly found their First Language nearly perfectly useless. Mainly out of well-studied despair, he crossed into writing fiction in English sometime in 1995, and now his stories and writings have appeared in The New Yorker, The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, TriQuarterly, Ploughshares, The Baffler, Granta, Esquire, The Paris Review etc and in the Best American Short Stories 1999, 2000 and 2006. He is the author of The Question of Bruno (2000), Nowhere Man (2002), and The Lazarus Project (2008) which was a finalist for the National Book Award and National Book Critics Circle Award.

A collection of stories Love and Obstacles came out in America in May 2009 and now is spreading around the world like swine flu, though it ought to be slightly more enjoyable. Indeed it is widely expected in certain narrow circles that Love and Obstacles will be nominated for some award or another, which it will unfailingly fail to win. Hemon’s books have been published in twenty different languages (rather than twenty identical languages). He writes a column in Bosnian, under the unfortunate title Hemonwood, for the Sarajevo magazine BH Dani, and selections of those columns have been published in Bosnia. He frequently crosses borders, which he hates, even though he is fully legal now. When he lives, he lives in Chicago with his wife and daughter. His daughter is an angel.

Love and Obstacles

Crackling with energy, restlessly inventive, and underpinned by a sixth sense for the absurdities of life, Love and Obstacles is the new collection from the writer who brought us The Question of Bruno, Nowhere Man, and The Lazarus Project. Growing up is never easy. But in a Communist yet cosmopolitan country, one which falls apart and leaves you spinning towards a new and overwhelming life abroad, the obstacles are many and various. Linked by a young narrator finding his way in the world – Kinshasa, Sarajevo, Chicago – and finding his way with words, these exhilarating stories are shot through with deadpan humour and heartbreaking truth, found in the most surprising of places.

Available now at all good bookshops

Picador

At Picador we want to get people excited about great writing. Our books are for everyone with a big imagination, and they range from spine-tingling to heart-stopping, from serious issue-led journalism to brilliant page-turning stories. Sometimes both together. We are proud to be publishing Aleksandar and that we hope you enjoy Love and Obstacles as much as we do.

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Also available by Aleksander Hemon