Die Welt und alles, was sie enthält

The long-awaited new novel by Aleksandar Hemon. When Archduke Franz Ferdinand arrives in Sarajevo on a June day in 1914, Rafael Pinto is busy chopping herbs behind the counter of the pharmacy he inherited from his father. It’s not quite the life he envisioned during his student days in libertarian Vienna, but it’s nothing that a shot of laudanum, a walk, and daydreaming couldn’t dissolve into contentment. As a writer, Hemon is aware of how tricky it can be to distort memories to make them suitable for literature. For readers, they are a gift. And then the world explodes. The war consumes everything he knew, and the only thing Pinto longs for is the affection of Osman, a comrade, a man of action, who complements Pinto's poetic soul. A charismatic storyteller and Pinto's protector and lover. Together, Pinto and Osman escape the trenches and fall into the clutches of spies and Bolsheviks. As they travel over mountains and through deserts, from one world to another, all the way to Shanghai, it is only Pinto's love for Osman that will survive. This grand, tender, and gripping story spans decades and continents and will shake you, just as the works of Hanya Yanagihara and Douglas Stuart do.