The World and All That It Holds

From Aleksandar Hemon, a big, brilliant, sweeping novel of love, memory, and history in the making.

As the Archduke Franz Ferdinand arrives in Sarajevo one June day in 1914, Rafael Pinto is busy crushing herbs and grinding tablets behind the counter at the pharmacy he inherited from his estimable father. It’s not quite the life he had expected during his poetry-filled student days in libertine Vienna, but it’s nothing a dash of laudanum from the high shelf, a summer stroll, and idle fantasies about passersby can’t put in perspective.

And then the world explodes. In the trenches in Galicia, fantasies fall flat. Heroism gets a man killed quickly. War devours all that they have known, and the only thing Pinto has to live for are the attentions of Osman, a fellow soldier, a man of action to complement Pinto’s introspective, poetic soul; a charismatic storyteller; Pinto’s protector and lover.

Together, Pinto and Osman will escape the trenches, survive near-certain death, tangle with spies and Bolsheviks. Over mountains and across deserts, from one world to another, all the way to Shanghai, it is Pinto’s love for Osman—with the occasional opiatic interlude—that keeps him going.

The World and All It Holds—in all its hilarious, heartbreaking, erotic, philosophical glory—showcases Aleksandar Hemon’s celebrated talent at its pinnacle. It is a grand, tender, sweeping story that spans decades and continents. It cements Hemon as one of the boldest voices in fiction.

About the Author

Aleksandar Hemon is the author of The Lazarus Project, a finalist for the 2008 National Book Award and the National Book Critics Circle Award, along with three books of short stories—The Question of Bruno; Nowhere Man, which was also a finalist for the National Book Critics Circle Award; and Love and Obstacles, and the novel The Making of Zombie Wars. He wrote two volumes of essays, The Book of My Lives and My Parents/This Does Not Belong to You. He has received a "genius" grant from the MacArthur Foundation, a Guggenheim Fellowship, the PEN/W.G. Sebald Award for a Writer in Mid-Career, and the 2020 John Dos Passos Prize. He cowrote the script for The Matrix Resurrections and produces music as Cielo Hemon. He teaches at Princeton University.