The World and All That It Holds

Hardcover, 352 pages

English language

Published by MCD.

ISBN:: 978-0-374-28770-2

(1 review)

As the Archduke Franz Ferdinand arrives in Sarajevo one June day in 1914, Rafael Pinto is busy crushing herbs and grinding tablets behind the counter at the pharmacy he inherited from his estimable father. It's not quite the life he had expected during his poetry-filled student days in libertine Vienna, but it's nothing a dash of laudanum from the high shelf, a summer stroll, and idle fantasies about passersby can't put in perspective.

And then the world explodes. In the trenches in Galicia, fantasies fall flat. Heroism gets a man killed quickly. War devours all that they have known, and the only thing Pinto has to live for are the attentions of Osman, a fellow soldier, a man of action to complement Pinto's introspective, poetic soul; a charismatic storyteller; Pinto's protector and lover.

Together, Pinto and Osman will escape the trenches, survive near-certain death, tangle with spies and Bolsheviks. Over …

As the Archduke Franz Ferdinand arrives in Sarajevo one June day in 1914, Rafael Pinto is busy crushing herbs and grinding tablets behind the counter at the pharmacy he inherited from his estimable father. It's not quite the life he had expected during his poetry-filled student days in libertine Vienna, but it's nothing a dash of laudanum from the high shelf, a summer stroll, and idle fantasies about passersby can't put in perspective.

And then the world explodes. In the trenches in Galicia, fantasies fall flat. Heroism gets a man killed quickly. War devours all that they have known, and the only thing Pinto has to live for are the attentions of Osman, a fellow soldier, a man of action to complement Pinto's introspective, poetic soul; a charismatic storyteller; Pinto's protector and lover.

Together, Pinto and Osman will escape the trenches, survive near-certain death, tangle with spies and Bolsheviks. Over mountains and across deserts, from one world to another, all the way to Shanghai, it is Pinto's love for Osman—with the occasional opiatic interlude—that keeps him going.

1 edition

Annie the Book reviewed The World and All That It Holds by Aleksandar Hemon

The World and All That It Holds, by Aleksandar Hemon

5 stars

Pinto, the son of a Jewish apothecary in Sarajevo, was made for gentler times. He’s a dreamer. He seeks love and pleasant sensations and ease. He doesn’t know it but, when we first meet him in Aleksandar Hemon’s shattering novel The World and All That It Holds, his world is about to vanish into chaos and bloodshed. On the day that the novel begins, Pinto opens the family shop, flirts with a Viennese military officer, and wanders into a curbside seat for the assassination of the Archduke Franz Ferdinand. Pinto is almost instantly drafted into a Bosnian regiment of the doomed Austro-Hungarian army. We know that Pinto is headed into one of the bloodiest conflicts in human history, so it’s kind of funny that he meets the love of his life in the middle of a warzone...

Read the rest of my review at A Bookish Type. I received …

Pinto, the son of a Jewish apothecary in Sarajevo, was made for gentler times. He’s a dreamer. He seeks love and pleasant sensations and ease. He doesn’t know it but, when we first meet him in Aleksandar Hemon’s shattering novel The World and All That It Holds, his world is about to vanish into chaos and bloodshed. On the day that the novel begins, Pinto opens the family shop, flirts with a Viennese military officer, and wanders into a curbside seat for the assassination of the Archduke Franz Ferdinand. Pinto is almost instantly drafted into a Bosnian regiment of the doomed Austro-Hungarian army. We know that Pinto is headed into one of the bloodiest conflicts in human history, so it’s kind of funny that he meets the love of his life in the middle of a warzone...

Read the rest of my review at A Bookish Type. I received a free copy of this book from the publisher via NetGalley, for review consideration.