The unprovoked murder of a Russian Jewish immigrant ignites a dazzling novel of flight, emigration and the meaning of home On 2 March 1908, Lazarus Averbuch, a young Russian Jewish immigrant to Chicago, tried to deliver a letter to the city’s Chief of Police. He was shot dead. After the shooting, it was claimed he was an anarchist assassin and an agent of foreign operative The unprovoked murder of a Russian Jewish immigrant ignites a dazzling novel of flight, emigration and the meaning of home On 2 March 1908, Lazarus Averbuch, a young Russian Jewish immigrant to Chicago, tried to deliver a letter to the city’s Chief of Police. He was shot dead. After the shooting, it was claimed he was an anarchist assassin and an agent of foreign operatives who wanted to bring the United States to its knees. His sister, Olga, was left alone and bereft in a city seething with tension. A century later, two friends become obsessed with the truth about Lazarus and decide to travel to his birthplace. As the stories intertwine, a world emerges in which everything and nothing has changed . . . ‘Thrillingly real, full of adventures and atrocities, philosophy and humour, anger and compassion, nihilism and dreams’ Sunday Times ‘This is easily Hemon’s best work to date, an intricately tessellated portrait of flight, emigration, and the meaning of home’ Evening Standard ‘His writing, as many have observed, is reminiscent of Nabokov’s. Both fizz’ Guardian ‘One of the best books of the year’ Financial Times About The Author: Aleksandar Hemon is the author of The Question of Bruno , which appeared on Best Books of 2000 lists nationwide, won several literary awards, and was published in eighteen countries, and Nowhere Man . Born in Sarajevo, Hemon arrived in Chicago in 1992, began writing in English in 1995, and his work now appears regularly in the New Yorker, Esquire, Granta, Paris Review and Best American Short Stories .