Aleksandar Hemon grew up in a blissful Sarajevo, where his childhood was consumed by football, his adolescence by friends, movies and girls and where, as a young man, he poked at the pretensions of his beloved city with American music, bad poetry, and slightly better journalism.

And then at twenty-seven Hemon flew to Chicago for a month-long visit. A matter of weeks later Sarajevo was engulfed in an atrocious war and Hemon found himself an exile – he wouldn’t return home for five years, and when he did, he found his city irrevocably changed.