Book Report: The Question of Bruno

9. Aleksandar Hemon, The Question of Bruno (2000) (4/15/26)

This book is labeled "stories," and although I expect not all of the eight stories are completely autobiographical (the book is not labeled "memoir"), they all ring true to lived experience. Hemon was born in Sarajevo (then Yugoslavia) in 1964, and made his way to the U.S. in 1992, where he has lived since.

The Question of Bruno begins with "Islands," relating in short sections aspects of a childhood holiday on an island off the Bosnian coast—family interactions, family stories, that place and time. Some of the family stories are of atrocities under Stalin, but these are (almost) overwhelmed by swims in the sea and wonderful feasts, sweet interactions with loved ones. 

The next two stories are about an imagined forester, Alphonse Kauders, presented as a work of research, and a real spy, Richard Sorge, who informs the young Aleksandar's imaginings about his own father as a spy—though the truth proves sadder. 

"The Accordion" takes us to the moment when Archduke Franz Ferdinand was assassinated in June 1914—and a relative of Hemon's happened to be in the throng, playing his accordion.

"Exchange of Pleasant Words" recounts a family reunion—a Hemoniad—following the 1984 Sarajevo Olympics, with attendant family history stretching from Ukraine and Bosnia back to Brittany and even Greece.

"A Coin" consists of love letters that focus on survival: getting from point A to point B in Sarajevo without being dropped by a sniper, and all the life lived in between.

"Blind Jozef Pronek & Dead Souls" (the title is a reference to the narrator's youthful rock band in Sarajevo) is about a young man who comes to the U.S. and ends up staying, though he doesn't speak the language and he has no prospects. But he makes do, working all manner of odd jobs. (The book's title comes from this chapter, where a doddery old woman keeps asking, "Where's Bruno?")

And finally, there's "Imitation of Live," told from the perspective of a young boy in Tito's Sarajevo. The "imitation" concerns movies—all the stories we tell and are told, all the stories we want to believe. 

It took me a while to finish this book, though it's short. I liked it well enough at the start, but by the end I was a bit bored by all the "telling detail." Still, I'm glad I read it.