‘If God existed, he’d be a solid midfielder’- Aleksandar Hemon at NCLA

On Wednesday 14^th March we were honoured that Sarajevo-born writer Aleksandar Hemon joined us to discuss his latest novel ‘The Book Of Our Lives’. The Newcastle audience was given a rare insight into the author who has been described as ‘the greatest writer of our generation’ (Colum McCann).

 

‘The Book Of Our Lives’ has been described by Hemon as ‘a love letter to two cities’- his Native Sarajevo and adopted Chicago. Hemon read from a chapter of the book entitled ‘If God existed, he’d be a solid midfielder’. Divorced from his homeland, the moment Hemon realized he could settle in Chicago was the moment he felt ingratiated into the football team he played with there.

 

Albert Camus said that everything he knew about the obligations of men he owed to football. During a reading Hemon unpacked all the promise of this statement, with his amusing anecdote of a portly, demonstrative player he once knew called Lido. Lido talked a great game, and was able after each match to offer great analysis on the limitations of other players whilst contributing little during play himself. Through Hemon’s work such characters were celebrated- people who offered bursts of colour during their life but who were often unmourned in their death.

Hemon then entered into a discussion of his life and work with William Fiennes, a novelist who also incorporates similar character studies in his work. Their conversation took in Nabokov, the culture of memoirs (‘the awful word contains me and moi’) and Hemon’s time at the UN. Hemon recounted how at their conferences every nation represented had the opportunity to offer input on reports- a crushingly slow process of democracy but one to which he could see no alternative. Throughout the evening Hemon offered the audience piercing, witty and generous insights into his life and work.
 

Jim Crace at NCLA

On 21/02/13 we were honoured to have Jim Crace, the internationally acclaimed and twice Booker shortlisted author, appear at NCLA. Described by John Updike as 'a writer of almost hallucinatory skill,' Jim Crace offered the crowd a compelling but at times harrowing insight into the writing process.

The evening began with a picture being shown from Crace's childhood. In it he was stood by his father in the sea during a trip to the coast. The rediscovery of this photo was described as the moment he first conceived a novel. He was struck, he told us, to find his wife in possession of a very similar photo of her as a child by the sea with her mother. This coincidence inspired him to create a novel to try and take his wife back to that moment.

But following the attainment of a large advance, he was unable to get a grasp on this novel despite huge commitment and effort to its cause. The sense of nagging doubt and elusiveness this evoked was skilfully imparted, leading up the moment his agent urged him to abandon the work. Having accepted this decision the homeward train journey, and an illuminating string of thoughts inspired by the landscape out of the window, led to the inception of ‘Harvest’- possibly Crace’s final novel.

This led us to a reading from Harvest. The novel charts the unravel of a pastoral idyll. The use of landscape in novel form, both as a means of understanding the world and of capturing loss, was proposed before an insightful and entertaining question and answer session with NCLA's Linda Anderson. Talks at NCLA also offer the audience the opportunity to ask questions of appearing writers, and Crace offered amusing and generous insights into his life and work.

'There Is Always A Story'- Alan Bowden's review of the Aleksandar Hemon event

Please click on the hyperlink to read Alan Bowden's excellent review of the Aleksandar Hemon event in The Culture Lab, Newcastle University on 13/03/13.

http://wordsofmercury.wordpress.com/2013/03/14/there-is-always-a-story-the-book-of-my-lives%c2%ad-aleksandar-hemon/