The Lazarus Project

THE LAZARUS PROJECT; Aleksandar Hemon; New York: Penguin, 2008. 292pgs. Fiction

Like Joseph Conrad, Aleksandar Hemon came late to the English language, but writes like a fury anyway, with total command of metaphor and vernacular. Though it is beautifully written, The Lazarus Project is not easy reading. Brik, the narrator, is a Bosnian, exiled to Chicago by accident when fighting flared in his country. Married to a surgeon, he cannot seem to settle down to life; he loses a teaching job, contributes to the family income by writing an occasional column on immigrant affairs, and is unsettled and wishy-washy in the way that makes Hamlet the Prince of Denmark such a crazymaker. Tired of being a deadbeat, he applies for and receives a grant to write a book about the historical case of Lazarus Averbuch, an immigrant who arrived bearing a letter at the home of Chief of Police George Shippy on the morning of March 2, 1908, and was almost immediately shot to death as a presumed anarchist. From there on, what the flyleaf promises the book does not deliver; namely, a straightforward back and forth of Brik's search for information about Lazarus alternating with the writer's view of Lazarus' own story. Instead, we get the horror and injustice of Lazarus' story, and Brik wandering hither and yon through the Old Country with his friend Rora, photographer and storyteller. The Lazarus Project is brilliantly conceived and written, funny, heartbreaking, deeply annoying, profane--blasphemous, even, and once you get it in your head, you won't get it out.

LW