The outstanding collection of seven short stories written by a Bosnian immigrant to United States Alexandar Hemon and entitled The Question of Bruno was met with a lot of praise and considerable sympathy by the readers. The collection is really an extraordinary composition by a talented author. The entire piece of work is set on scenes around Bosnia where the author currently lives or Yugoslavia where the he spent his childhood. Some reviewers went as far as comparing Hemon to such great writers in American literature as Vladimir Nabokov (for his penetrating view on the everyday world of American life) or Joseph Conrad (for his inventive and often unconventional use of the English language). Such comparisons will not seem unsuitable if one will research straight into the contents of Hemon`s text. Its playful, welcoming, provocative, and enlightened manner is evident even in the collection's title, because although it suggests a single question by a certain Bruno, in reality the author poses at least a dozen of them.
The first such question is basically concerned with limits of the narration. Although the inability of the text (at least single text) to capture the actual reality is long since it becomes common wisdom in the post modern literature, Hemon manages to present it almost as a revelation due to a skillful manipulation of narrative techniques themselves! In “A Coin” short story, for example, he compares two attempts to document life - one by a Bosnian woman Aida, a TV editor in Sarajevo, and another by an unnamed Chicago resident - one of the author`s numerous alter-egos. Through witnessing this process, the reader is able to witness to what (great) extent the resulting narratives are, in fact, reflecting the pictures in the minds of their authors, and how greatly they might differ even in describing the same event (the last effect is exhibited in the conflict between Aida and British cameraman).
The second question which the reader can clearly identify is the question of alienation. It becomes central to the author`s prose (as well as to his life), as he puts in the focus of his texts people, separated from the lands they inhabit by culture shock (“Blind Josef Pronek& Dead Souls”, “A Coin”) or by memory (“Islands”, “Exchange of Pleasant Words”). For instance, Aida’s aunt chokes to death due to the fact that she couldn’t go out for her asthma medication; the snipers had prevented her from going out. These distances with environment and people do not only help the author to achieve a perspective unusual to his (largely American) readership, but essentially remind about the state we all find ourselves in - alienated, disoriented, and making fun of all this as the only available reconciliation.
Finally, perhaps the most unique question, arising from this collection of short stories is our immediate relations with history. Even though in some of his writings (“The Accordion”) Hemon attempts to reconcile a unique and breathing living human being with mechanical and devastating current of history, what we witness throughout the book is how the latter intervenes in the life of the former, frequently ruining it, or, at the very least, transforming it greatly. Actually, that is what is clearly presented in the author`s biography as well.
Works Cited
Hemon, Aleksandar. The Question of Bruno: Stories. Trade Paperback ed. Knopf Doubleday Group, 2002. Print.
