Nowhere Man
by Aleksandar Hemon
Picador $101
Aleksandar Hemon, author of The Question of Bruno, one of the most celebrated debuts in recent American fiction, returns with another mind-bending novel. We briefly encountered the character of Jozef Pronek in Bruno, when he left Sarajevo to visit the US in 1992, arriving just in time to watch the war break out on TV. With Nowhere Man, Pronek gets his own book. In each chapter he appears in different phases of life: there's Pronek as a baby ('during a diaper change, he peed in a perfect arc on an electric heater, discontinuing the arc just in time not to get electrocuted'); Pronek as a punk with the high school band Jozef Pronek and the Dead Souls; and Pronek earning a minimum wage in Chicago. The postmodern structure makes it difficult to follow the narrative, but it's stylish and funny, and casts light on the plight of individuals displaced by war.
