Stop Smiling celebrates prodigiously talented author and fellow Chicagoan, Aleksander Hemon, hailed by the New York Times Book Review as “an extraordinary writer; one who seems not simply gifted, but necessary.” 

Hemon’s highly anticipated new novel, The Lazarus Project, hit stores on May 1st. The book recounts the controversial murder of Jewish immigrant Lazarus Averbuch in Chicago in 1908, and a modern writer’s quest to follow Averbuch’s story back to his homeland, Eastern Europe.

Aleksander Hemon is a native of Sarajevo and moved to Chicago in 1992. Within three years he had published his first story in English. He has since garnered extensive acclaim for his books The Question of Bruno and Nowhere Man, as well as his fiction and non-fiction published in, among other places, The New Yorker, Esquire and The Paris Review.

This private gathering was held at Stop Smiling headquarters and was accompanied by a selection of photographs by Velibor Bozovic, a Bosnian photographer currently residing in Montreal. Bozovic is a good friend of Hemon’s and collaborated with him on the production of The Lazarus Project.

Recorded Wednesday, April 30, 2008 at Stop Smiling Storefront.