Books: “The World and All It Holds,” by Aleksander Hemon

The World and All It Holds,” written by a National Book award-winning author Aleksander Hemon, is a smart, witty page-turner of the highest order, told from the POV of Bosnian soldiers who just happen to be in love with each other.

Based on a true story, the novel begins at a critical moment in 20th century history—August 1914, when the Archduke Ferdinand is assassinated in Sarajevo. Raphael Pinto, a young Jewish pharmacist back in town from med school in Vienna (and not averse to taking an occasional hit of laudanum) sees it happen first-hand. Soon after, he is conscripted into the army as a medic, where he meet and falls in love with Osman, a handsome Bosnian Muslim.

Unfortunately, within months the two are captured during a fierce battle with Russian troops. Pinto and Osman are then sent to a Tashkent prison camp where they are tortured by Bolsheviks, and from which they escape when the guards are looking the other way.

Things get complicated when Osman fathers a child, Rahela, whom he leaves with Pinto when he is suddenly recaptured. Pinto and the baby girl make their way East, traveling with caravans over the Urals and across the scorching Taklamakan Desert. They have neither food nor water nor much of anything to go on except Pinto’s tales of early life in Sarajevo, which he tells the kid in a polyglot mix of Ladino, Bosnian, German, Russian and Uyghur.

Miraculously they wind up in one piece, along with thousands of other refugees, in 1930s Shanghai, just as the Japanese are beginning to bomb the city to smithereens.

Pinto survives every obstacle in his path, guided by his Judaism, his imaginary conversations with Osman (who is probably dead), and his belief that he can return to Sarajevo.

Hemon makes the history we read about in textbook come alive. However, should Pinto’s narrative get a bit fey at times, there’s an English spy character who steps in occasionally to Brit-splain it all for you. A “remarkable tale of love and war along Heman’s own Silk Road,” says Gary Shreyngart. Yes. What Gary said.