Author speaks on war-torn Bosnia
Critically acclaimed novelist uses segregation from homeland as source of inspiration
By: Amy Swanson
Issue date: 2/9/06 Section: LifeStyle
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Hemon uses his personal experience of growing up in Sarajevo, Bosnia-Herzegovina as the basis for his writing. He moved to the United States in 1992 and devoted his time to learning English and writing.
Hemon said he first began to learn English as a teen-ager when he got into rock and roll and realized he couldn't understand the music. Learning to speak English and then write in English took a few years for Hemon to accomplish.
"I write in two different languages," Hemon said. "It is a very privileged and strained situation, but a lot is gained in translation and that is very interesting to me. The idiom that is dead in Bosnian can become alive in English and vice versa."
Murray Farish, adjunct faculty, introduced Hemon to the overcrowded room in Pearson House.
"Telling and writing stories is of utmost historical and political and human importance, it is a way to not only remembering but of making memories part of your life," Farish said. "Hemon, who found himself suddenly far from his home in Sarajevo in 1992, decided that the way to try to live despite this fact was to learn to write in English and American fiction is so much the richer for that bold decision."
In his novel, "Nowhere Man," Hemon tells the story of Jozef Pronek, from his birth to his arrival in the U.S., where he watches war-torn Bosnia unfold over the television thousands of miles away.
"I don't know what my writing would have been like had there not been a war in Sarajevo or I had stayed under siege," Hemon said. "It's easy to not care about others when you have a comfortable life so I started paying attention to details and peoples' lives."
Webster's Visiting Writers Series is in its 20th year at Webster bringing in a variety of novelists, essayists and poets of national and international acclaim for the students and faculty.
