The Lazarus Project
First edition cover design
AuthorAleksandar Hemon
CountryUnited States
LanguageEnglish
GenreNovel
PublisherRiverhead Books
Publication date
1 May 2008
Media typePrint (hardcover)
Pages304 pp
ISBN978-1-59448-988-4
OCLC183267842

The Lazarus Project is a 2008 novel by Bosnian fiction writer and journalist Aleksandar Hemon. It features the true story of the death of Lazarus Averbuch, a teenaged Jewish immigrant to Chicago who was shot and killed by a police officer in 1908. It was a finalist for the 2008 National Book Award and National Book Critics Circle Award, as well as the winner of the inaugural Jan Michalski Prize for Literature in 2010.[1][2]

Reception

The Lazarus Project received starred reviews from Booklist,[3] Kirkus Reviews,[4] and Publishers Weekly.[5]

Kirkus called the book "[a] literary page-turner that combines narrative momentum with meditations on identity and mortality."[4]

Glyn Maxwell with London Review of Books commented, "Stories. True stories, false stories, good stories, rotten stories. Everything in Hemon’s beautiful new novel trembles within this matrix, where a story’s force or charm is at least as significant as its veracity."[6]

Numerous reviewers highlighted Hemon's prose. Publishers Weekly said, "Hemon’s workmanlike prose underscores his piercing wit, and between the murders that bookend the novel, there’s pathos and outrage enough to chip away at even the hardest of hearts."[5] Booklist's Donna Seaman agreed with the sentiment: "Hemon’s sentences seethe and hiss, their dangerous beauty matched by Velibor Bozovic’s eloquent black-and-white photographs, creating an excoriating novel of rare moral clarity."[3] Carol Anshaw, writing for Los Angeles Times added, "Hemon is immensely talented-a natural storyteller and a poet, a maker of amazing, gorgeous sentences in what is his second language."[7]

In Literary Review, John Dugdale wrote: "Aleksandar Hemon is essentially a miniaturist with a flair for stylistically striking description, at his best here in passages evoking Olga’s apartment and neighbourhood. On this evidence he should stick to the sketches and short stories at which he excels, rather than acceding to the familiar pressures to produce long-form fiction."[8]

Writing for the New York Times, Cathleen Schine says the book is "a remarkable, and remarkably entertaining, chronicle of loss and hopelessness and cruelty propelled by an eloquent, irritable existential unease. It is, against all odds, full of humor and full of jokes."

Writing for The Guardian, James Lasdun provided a negative review, noting

The Lazarus Project is one of several recent books that orbit these subjects. Its sentiments are all very correct and laudable, but as a novel it seems to me largely a failure. It opts, initially, for the oblique angle... Period reconstruction clearly isn't Hemon's game... What seem to interest him more are the various practical and metaphysical questions raised by his own desire to tell the story. The result is a familiar postmodern construction: a novel about the writing of a novel ...Lacking the pressure of a plot, these passages stake everything on their pure interest as writing.[9]

Awards and honors for The Lazarus Project
Year Award/Honor Result Ref.
2008 Booklist Editors' Choice: Adult Books Selection [10]
Chicago Tribune Heartland Prize for Fiction Winner
National Book Critics Circle Award for Fiction Finalist [4][11]
National Book Award for Fiction Finalist [4]
2009 Society of Midland Authors Award for Adult Fiction Winner [12]
2010 Jan Michalski Prize for Literature Winner [1][2]

See also

References

  1. 1 2 "Le bosniaque Aleksandar Hemon reçoit le 1er prix Jan-Michalski". LivresHebdo (in French). 2010-11-18. Retrieved 2022-02-05.
  2. 1 2 "The Jan Michalski Prize for Literature 2010". Foundation Jan Michalski. November 2010. Retrieved 2022-02-05.
  3. 1 2 Seaman, Donna (2008-04-01). "The Lazarus Project". Booklist. Retrieved 2022-02-05.
  4. 1 2 3 4 "The Lazarus Project". Kirkus Reviews. 2010-05-20. Archived from the original on 2022-02-06. Retrieved 2022-02-05.
  5. 1 2 "Fiction Book Review: The Lazarus Project by Aleksandar Hemon, Author, Velibor Bozovic, Photographer, Chicago Historical Society, Photographer . Riverhead $24.95 (294p) ISBN 978-1-59448-988-4". PublishersWeekly.com. Retrieved 2022-02-06.
  6. ↑ Maxwell, Glyn (2008-10-23). "Miracle in a Ring-Binder". London Review of Books. Vol. 30, no. 20. ISSN 0260-9592. Retrieved 2022-02-06.
  7. ↑ Anshaw, Carol (2008-05-04). "'The Lazarus Project: A Novel' by Aleksandar Hemon". Los Angeles Times. Retrieved 2022-02-06.
  8. ↑ "John Dugdale - Everything Is Replicated". Literary Review. 2023-10-05. Retrieved 2023-10-05.
  9. ↑ Lasdun, James (2008-09-05). "Book review: The Lazarus Project by Aleksandar Hemon". the Guardian. Retrieved 2022-02-06.
  10. ↑ "Booklist Editors' Choice: Adult Books, 2008". Booklist. 2009-01-01. Archived from the original on 2022-02-06. Retrieved 2022-02-05.
  11. ↑ "2008". National Book Critics Circle. Archived from the original on 2022-01-25. Retrieved 2022-02-06.
  12. ↑ "Past Winners". The Society of Midland Authors. Archived from the original on 2022-02-06. Retrieved 2022-02-06.
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