Aleksandar Hemon on The World and All That It Holds with Salvatore Scibona

Tuesday, 7:00 pm EDT January 31, 2023

The Center for Fiction
& Livestreamed

The World and All That It Holds - Eliana Cohen-Orth

The Ticket/Voucher option includes a $10 Bookstore voucher, redeemable toward the featured event book on the night of the event. All registrants will receive a link to livestream the event.

The Center for Fiction welcomes multi-award-winning author Aleksandar Hemon (The Lazarus Project, The Matrix Resurrections) for the launch of The World and All That It Holds—a grand, tender, sweeping novel that spans decades and continents and cements Hemon’s status as one of the boldest voices in fiction. In this epic and intimate story set in 1914 Sarajevo, gentle-souled Rafael Pinto pounds herbs in his pharmacy until war explodes with Archduke Franz Ferdinand’s assassination and Pinto finds himself in the trenches, falling in love with fellow soldier Osman. Together, they escape the gruesome realities of battle and travel over mountains and across deserts, from one world to another. Award-winning novelist Salvatore Scibona (The Volunteer) joins Hemon to discuss this remarkable and riveting examination of war, history, philosophy, death, and love of all kinds.

In Conversation

Aleksandar Hemon

Aleksandar Hemon

Aleksandar 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 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. He was the recipient of a 2003 Guggenheim Fellowship and a “genius grant” from the MacArthur Foundation. He co-wrote the script for The Matrix Resurrections and produces music as Cielo Hemon. He lives in Princeton, New Jersey, where he teaches at the university.

Photo Credit: Velibor Bozovic
Salvatore Scibona

Salvatore Scibona

Salvatore Scibona is the recipient of the Mildred and Harold Strauss Living award from the American Academy of Arts and Letters. His first novel, The End, was a finalist for the National Book Award and winner of the Young Lions Fiction Award. His second novel, The Volunteer, was called a “masterpiece” by the New York Times and won the Ohioana Book Award. His work has won a Guggenheim Fellowship, a Pushcart Prize, an O. Henry Award, and a Whiting Award; and the New Yorker named him one of its “20 Under 40” fiction writers. He is the Sue Ann and John Weinberg Director of the Cullman Center for Scholars and Writers at the New York Public Library.

Photo Credit: Beowulf Sheehan

Featured Book

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The World and All That It Holds

By Aleksandar Hemon

Published by Macmillan

PURCHASE

As the Archduke Franz Ferdinand arrives in Sarajevo one 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 libertine Vienna, but it’s nothing a dash of laudanum from the high shelf, a summer stroll, and idle fantasies about passersby can’t put in perspective.

And then the world explodes. In the trenches in Galicia, fantasies fall flat. Heroism gets a man killed quickly. War devours all that they have known, and the only thing Pinto has to live for are the attentions of Osman, a fellow soldier, a man of action to complement Pinto’s introspective, poetic soul; a charismatic storyteller; Pinto’s protector and lover.

Together, Pinto and Osman will escape the trenches, survive near-certain death, tangle with spies and Bolsheviks. Over mountains and across deserts, from one world to another, all the way to Shanghai, 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, philosophical glory—showcases Aleksandar Hemon’s celebrated talent at its pinnacle. It is a grand, tender, sweeping story that spans decades and continents. It cements Hemon as one of the boldest voices in fiction.