I wrote about Aleksandar Hemon’s new collection of essays, The Book of My Lives, for Maclean’s. The book covers such a diverse mix of subjects that it almost seems like Hemon is going for the literary equivalent of what he calls the “perfect” borscht: “ideally, it contains everything.” It’s an impressive piece of work—Hemon’s impulse to narrativize his experiences leads to writing that is sometimes excruciatingly sad, but often deeply funny, too.