Book Review: The Book of my Lives

 Be ready for waves and waves of incessant despair, bitter residues of the peaceful past, and tragedies of life, embraced by the author. 

The Book of My Lives is a collection of essays written by Aleksandar Hemon in various journals, collections, and books, spanning from The New Yorker to the South-Eastern European Anthology, between 2000 and 2012. They are amended or revised, and then organized in chronological order for the purpose of publishing this book. The narrative is flawless. Super-delicious, well-written, with a very visceral narrative that makes Hemon an outstanding author. In the stories, Hemon is brutally honest, sometimes self-deprecatory, and sometimes (rightfully) the opposite. The emotions expounded are very relatable as they are developed from some humane conditions of life that many people at least partially experience or are familiar with. 

So, in brief, The Book of My Lives, is a catalogue of handpicked landmarks that somehow transforms the author's life from serene household to a war-torn Bosnia and from there catapulted to the US, and by some mysterious way, the wings of tragedy continuously hover over, following him up to the later stages of his journey that is pictured as a middle-class life in Chicago.

As a collection of melancholic, nostalgic, war-derived literature, this is a solid read, and I actually found each essay gripping. On the other hand, as a whole, a well-rounded read,  giving me insight or an overview of a life trajectory, it does not hit the high bar for me. I sought that string connecting the beads across these experiences. I sought that overarching narrative synthesized from the amalgamation of these periods. I couldn't find one. But what did I find? 

In this book, I found a misplaced person feeling for his homeland and following the tragic Balkan war unfolding by the second and disintegrating his hometown of Sarajevo. He somehow manages to cope and finds his second home in Chicago as her parents move to Ontario. The routes to these destinations are not clearly explained. But the author's initial impressions are pretty lackluster. The book gives a dreadful picture of the city. There is no notion that this "soup" provided a neighborhood that was at least nominally dedicated to his origins in Ukraine. Is this picture of poverty and conspicuous crime all that represents the city of Chicago? Or are there miraculous ways that asylum seekers, refugees, immigrants, and all sorts of honest, hard-working outliers may have a shot at a better life and social status? 

If you are looking for a wholesome life experience, you should find it elsewhere in Hemon's bibliography. Here, the lens is focused on misery. Life is probably there, hidden somewhere beneath all the drama. Those are not pertinent to the narrative of this book. Hence, the focus is on selected snapshots. For example, the experiences of living in terror and poverty under a socialist regime (1970s Yugoslavia) give an excellent baseline to dig in and further explore and compare with the wild dynamism of switching to a life in a liberal democracy. The enlightening effect of these observations is particularly felt by those who have trodden these dim immigration pathways. However, it is beyond the scope of this book. These are independent images of scattered POV. 

Instead, everything is lined up for a tour de force of nostalgia. The constraints of life under socialism are now packaged as a nostalgic past and an afflicted youth. The West is also not that welcoming environment to find peace and solace. It's all the machinery of life, an experiment in dullness and melancholy. Again, through the cracks of these essays, people fall in love, people travel back and forth freely across the globe, children are born, and family bonds are kept alive (despite a difficult exile). But again, the focus is on death, on bereavement, and on tragedy.

As a student of human psychology, the opacity of modern human feelings has always puzzled me. There may be one simple explanation, partly in charge, and that is the nature of happiness. The sense of happiness and contentment is a bottomless pursuit. These life experiences reminded me once again how much we are indebted to our past, if we still acknowledge our independent identity and have not tactlessly assimilated into a faceless so-called new home. 

It's very good to read autobiographies, comprehensive and complete ones. In my opinion, what makes the genre valuable is providing a thorough picture of life, from childhood privileges, the temporal luxury of living in safety and security at some periods, to tragic, brutal, unfair affairs imposed upon us. That is worthwhile to read. Otherwise, the author adapts a scattergun approach, which only captures snapshots of dramatic despair and opts for a melancholic narrative (which undoubtedly suits the public palate). 

In summary, if you want to read the well-rounded narrative of a refugee's life (with all the ebbs and flows) this book is obviously not for you. However, if you want to read a neat collection of masterfully-written collages of hardships and emotional strains inspected through a bitter mid-life retrospective spectacles, you will find this book amusing.

Pedram

10/30/2025

Book Review: Sleet

The book I bought on a cold autumn night is a collection of Stig Dagerman's best short stories. The book is translated by Steven Hartman. While reading these stories for the second time, I had a better chance to step back and look for commonalities, patterns, themes, and, in general, to better understand the author's philosophy. To address this, I'd look at stand-out stories as an independent entity. These stories are written at various time points; therefore, it is reasonable to represent various concerns of the author throughout his life, from desolate childhood, anxious adolescence to the cold facts of adulthood. Here is a brief one-line take on each of the stories:

The Stories:

To Kill a Child:

The inconspicuous nature of the tragedy unfolding before our eyes. The accident is the scene of sacrifice. The victimhood of innocence before the ignorant eyes of the static machinery of the mundane.

In Grandmother's House: 

An immaculate encounter with Death. The absence of a loved one. A beautiful line is from the grandmother, hearing the voice of the grandfather in the form of a grunt and whisper coming from beneath the gravel:

"He says to go inside. He says he's not sleeping, he's just resting. He'll move on in a minute."

The Surprise:

This one deserves its spot as the first of the series. It is truly heartbreaking. A plot slowly progressing to a dim climax in a setting as harsh as a Swedish winter. The notion of poverty, loss, and bereavement, and a crude patriarchy exercising cruelty on a widow and the child. All the sadness gets worse when you, as the reader, see the brutal experience from the innocent POV of a child.

Men of Character:

The story depicts a chauvinistic view across relationships and the environment. A series of mistrust, betrayal, adultery, abrasive manners, and men and women so engaged with their self-interest. However, as the story unfolds, layers of pathological, chauvinistic undertow emerge. This is a story of guilt and sin and an emotional fracture. But mostly it pictures coarse masculine hubris. As the author put it fabulously, this story depicts "men pregnant with their own honor."

The Stockholm Car:

Again, the rural vs urban, the city vs village, the rich and the poor, come together in an unsavory manner. The subtly hidden in each manner and movement of the gentleman from Stockholm. It is one image that is among the most violent pictures in modern literature, without uttering a word, without raising a hand, and with no gun. The simple neglectful behavior is what hurts the kids (and me as the audience) the most.

Where’s My Icelandic Sweater?

Alcoholism and manipulation are the main themes. The storytelling follows a pattern that was later categorized as a stream of consciousness. Herein, however, we are dealing more with unconsciousness than consciousness. Curiously, the protagonist stirs a variety of emotions in me: from anger to pity, and even sometimes I felt sympathy as the man is afflicted with PTSD of his wife's betrayal. This story is as dark as it gets, and curiously, it is the last in this series. 

Major Themes:

In my mind, Dagerman is a genius and these short stories are oeuvres of a writer/journalist whose lens captured the agony of twentieth-century mankind. There is plenty of literary assets that he denied us beyond his published works. The repeated themes are human regret, the entrapment of existence, being sentenced to lose gradually while poorly equipped to cope, and financial destitution:

1. Existential Burden:

"Time does not heal the wounds of a dead child, and it heals very poorly the pain of a mother who forgot to buy sugar and who sent her child across the road to borrow some. And it heals just as poorly the anguish of a once cheerful man who has killed a child."

2. Fragile Foundation of Being:

Again, the story To Kill a Child is the prime picture of this notion, which is palpable in Dagerman's works.

3. Nordic Despair and Cold Family Ties:

Parts of the stories resemble the existential dread in Ingmar Bergman's movies. The Nordic existential despair in the Winter Light movie. The conflict of belief and the utter solitude we endure throughout existence. For example, in the story The Surprise, a family function and a milieu which traditionally evoke warmth and bond, we read a most heartbreaking and harsh, steely hierarchy:

"His grandfather looked up from the paper, and his aunt let the ladle slip from her hand.

"If it ain't the widow," said Hakan's grandfather. "What you got in the bag? Not a present, I'll bet.""

4. Misogyny:

A prime example, as mentioned above, is the brilliant "Men of Honor". Rarely is a story more aptly titled!

5. Poverty and Social Injustice:

And of course, poverty has a ubiquitous presence in the stories, sometimes married to the children's innocent behaviors in a heart-wrenching fashion:

"Like all children with poor mothers, he was ashamed at first and pretended that he didn't know her. He crossed the street with his friends, parted company, and then timidly made his way back. His Mother sensed his anxiety, and she did not take his hand until they were completely alone on the street."

In conclusion, reading Dagerman leaves one with no surprise why he has been labeled as a Swedish Camus. The writings reek of existential philosophy.

Pedram

10/20/2025

Book Review: We Have Never Been Woke

The nascent terminology and concepts are inevitably rough and subject to refinement in the future. That can be regarded as a side-effect of articulating a new theory. "We Have Never Been Woke" is a 2024 book written by sociologist Musa al-Gharbi. The book is a deep dive into the fourth wave of "Awokening" in the US labeled as "Wokeism". The book investigates the origins, formative phases, and the torchbearers of the Woke movement. Furthermore, the book critically looks into how these movements actually managed or cared to connect to their alleged target population. 

Several ideas explained in this book are not necessarily novel or earth-shattering, but the systematic formulation of the pathology underlying the movement is something that makes this book worth your while. The main target of current analyses is a stratum labeled as "symbolic capitalists". These are liberal elites holding managerial or academic authority, and they mostly define their social status under the umbrella concept of progressivism. One major example is the current state of Ivy League institutions, as the major bedrock for the progressive ideology, is very alarming, and Dr. al-Gharbi's narrative regarding these elite universities rings true to my ears. 

The truth is, Woke slogans, good or bad, were merely applied as ploys for symbolic capitalists to gain more control and boost their authority. That is the canonical point that makes the whole read more alarming. The beneficiaries of the current Awokening are not the minoritized or marginalized sects. But the subgroup of influencers with Democratic-leaning political orientation and hailing from higher socio-economic percentiles, who, in line with their power-craving modus operandi, want to exploit Woke language as an extra muscle for their political grip on power. Social justice, diversity, equality, and inclusion are mere code-names in the game, as abstract as it gets. In reality, in the political scene, they are fierce observers of the current framework at best and sympathizers of social injustice at worst. This unfortunate situation will inevitably deepen the gap between political parties and activists with a disenfranchised social base. 

"We Have Never Been Woke" is a good book; it is a nascent formulation of a decade-long social issue.

Pedram

10/13/2025