From the author of The World and All That It Holds, Aleksandar Hemon's The Book of My Lives is an unforgettable memoir of a life forever marked by international conflict. Aleksandar Hemon grew up in a blissful Sarajevo, where his childhood was consumed by football, his adolescence by friends, movies and girls and where, as a young man, he poked at the pretensions of his beloved city with American music, bad poetry, and slightly better journalism. And then, at twenty-seven, Hemon flew to Chicago for a month-long visit. A matter of weeks later Sarajevo was engulfed in an atrocious war. Hemon found himself an exile. He wouldn't return home for five years and, when he did, he found his city irrevocably changed. 'If you've never read Aleksandar Hemon, prepare to have your worldview deepened' - Jonathan Safran Foer, author of Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close