Love and obstacles - Aleksandar Hemon

Set in the darkest heart of Africa, in the backwaters of Slovenia, in the melting pot of Chicago, this brilliant collection of stories is coloured throughout by the 1992 Bosnian war.

All but one of them features Bogdan, first met as a surly teenager during his diplomat father's assignment in Zaire, where he's happily corrupted by a degenerate American espionage agent. In each successive story, Bogdan recalls the surreal and salient experiences of his life: his youth with his ironically depicted family; his early determination to be a poet, his accidental sojourn in America, where he was caught after the commencement of hostilities in Bosnia; and his return to a 'cesspool of insignificant, drizzly suffering', where he has a transformative night interviewing a Pulitzer Prize-winning writer.

As ever, Hemon confronts pain and anonymity without blanching but also finds delicious absurdity in experience. His is the great humanity of a writer who sees life on the margins, and gives voice to what he finds in a style that is breathtakingly his own.