Shelf Control #7: The Lazarus Project by Aleksandar Hemon

Shelf Control is a weekly book meme @ Bookshelf Fantasies in which we write about one book that we want to read and already own. Read our hostess Lisa’s choice for this week over here.

On March 2, 1908, nineteen-year-old Lazarus Averbuch, an Eastern European Jewish immigrant, was shot to death on the doorstep of the Chicago chief of police and cast as a would-be anarchist assassin.

A century later, a young Eastern European writer in Chicago named Brik becomes obsessed with Lazarus’s story. Brik enlists his friend Rora — a war photographer from Sarajevo — to join him in retracing Averbuch’s path.

Through a history of pogroms and poverty, and a prism of a present-day landscape of cheap mafiosi and even cheaper prostitutes, the stories of Averbuch and Brik become inextricably intertwined, creating a truly original, provocative, and entertaining novel that confirms Aleksandar Hemon as one of the most dynamic and essential literary voices of our time. [Goodreads]

I found this in a book sale and immediately picked it up. Since then I have picked it up a couple of times and then put it back as something else took precedence.

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Have you read this? Do you like books based on real events?

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Want to participate or see what others have on their shelves, you can do it here.